Apart from the docking tutorial, I've not played the Beta - but I suspect it's only a slice/branch of the master build.

I could be wrong, but I feel that FD are keeping plenty back - we shall see. Meanwhile, I need some flight time!

Hi,Im new to the site. I also haven't played E:D yet but have been following the progression via Youtube. I actually stumbled onto the video/game when trawling through videos about pc building and current comparisons between consoles and pc. This game has inspired me to switch back from console and to build my own pc over Christmas in order to start playing in the New Year. I agree in thinking FD are holding back and that what we are seeing now is just a good  section of the final piece. I have heard some concerns voiced about the fact that as the game expands to the full size Galaxy, players may become a little lost with the lack of contact between other players, NPC and human. Apart from that I cant wait to see what they do with it and where it goes in the future. Roll on New Year... :bye:  :O  :pickeat:

Welcome to SSC, amigo!

I've been playing since the start of the standard beta in late August.

After some initial disappointments (some of which were the result of high expectations), I'd have to say for the most part I'm extremely impressed with E:D.

Whether or not they're ready for release though, I'm not quite sure.  I certainly don't regret getting involved with the beta, but FD seems to do things rather strangely.  On the bright side, they add content at an absolutely staggering rate.  Beta 2 started only about two months (I think?) after beta 1 and, considering the time frame, contained an amazing amount of content.  On the other hand, FD's bug fixing habits have me rather puzzled.  When each version of the beta is released, they will release bug-fixing patches for the next 3 days or so.  That's very nice, but after that they stop releasing patches completely until the next version number is out, even though it is evident in game and in the forums that significant bugs remain.  Why they do it this way I can't say, one might speculate that they are saving the more difficult to fix bugs for the next major iteration, but it certainly doesn't seem that way in game.  I'm certainly not implying this pattern is in anyway lazy or incompetent, but it does raise eyebrows.

On the whole, the persistence of some seemingly technically minor, but gameplay breaking bugs makes me suspect that they will not have a smooth release.  If I were them I'd probably push it back 1 month to continue with bug-fixing.  Before recently everybody expected this anyway, especially considering how quickly they have progressed, so I don't think it would have been a big deal.

As far as whether the game has sufficient content, that's much harder to say.  By at least some measure, I'd say definitely not yet, but the pace they've shown so far makes me optimistic about expansions.  What I'd really like to see is something I'd expect to play 1000 hours or so over the next 5 years, much like I have done in the past with EVE.  I certainly don't think E:D has enough content now, but perhaps releasing while they build more is not a bad thing.  I think one of the fundamental problems with Elite-type games are that they are inevitably still going to be "progression-based" in some way or another, but unlike, for instance, a traditional RPG, this "progression" needs to be completely non-linear.  So, instead of having a 1-dimensional line to fill with content, like in Diablo, Borderlands or even say Divinity Original Sin, the developers have to fill an n-dimensional labyrinth of content.  

Can FD do this?  Hard to say, it is certainly in a much better state than it was even in beta 1.  The addition of many more types of ship modules is, to me, a very big deal.  I'd expect that a lot of what most people will want to spend their time doing is improving their ships, and it does seem they give you a fair amount of interesting toys to play with.  I would really like them to add a much better way to visualize ship fitting and your current ship specifications, as right now all you get is a few hideous lists which clearly have much less information than they should.  (Again, I think improving on this is a much bigger deal than it may at first sound like, because a main impetus for playing the game will probably be improving your ship.)

Right now pretty much all you're likely to really do is dog-fight (including in missions) and trade.  That's not so bad, as mission running and trading is quite fun in E:D, but when flying different ships I am reminded (sometimes strongly) of my disappointment in their flight model.  This is because it seems that the very specific WWII tail-chasing in space thing that they seemed to so bluntly be going for seems to work very differently depending on whether two ships are closely matched in speed and maneuverability.  Sometimes it works out... well just weird (I suppose this could be the subject of another whole post).  They don't have anything ground-breaking as far as exploration goes, but the universe is so gorgeous and realistic that it certainly does a good job holding my fascination, even if I'm not raking in huge profits.  

Regardless of all this, if you are a fan of space-sims, I'd say you should run over to their site and buy Elite Dangerous immediately.  At worst, it will be one of the best of a new generation, at best, it will be one of the best games ever made.  I can't say yet whether I'll look back at it 10 years from now and think of it as one of my favorite games, or if it's only something to love because of the horrible scarcity in space-sims (a scarcity which persists as so many projects are in development but almost nothing has released yet).  Who knows, maybe one day it'll have the same majesty as EVE Online, but right now it is your only alternative which is more a space-sim and less an RPG. 

I have been playing on and off since the Alpha.  There are a lot of vocal people on the forums and its hard to please them all. Graphically the game is fantastic but you need good hardware to play OTOH it's a lot faster than star citizen. The sound design is superb far better than star citizen and up there with edge of chaos. The weapons sounds effects and system noises are immersive.

My major gripe is the flight model. Quite late in beta 2 they totally changed it and now its WWII fighters in space and no newtonian movement. Before that with flight assist off you could coast indefinitely. The argument is that this is for gameplay balance, but for me its totally screwed the game I was enjoying. Why am I slowing down in space when I apply no thrust. 

The main game play elements are just learning the game as there are a lot of controls and control options, the dogfight combat for bounties, trading runs and just exploration and mining. The latter is actually the most fun as the galaxy is huge and beautiful. The FTL super cruise system is fun and you can fly around the sun and systems and there is a lot to explore.

Docking is a challenge as lining up on the pad needs a steady hand. Trading is the same as in all these games and the usual will I get jumped on my way to the station. Seems you get interdicted all the time and have to run away with cargo. the starter ships are terrible traders so you have to fight for bounty to get a bigger bay first.

So I think the game peaked for me at about Beta 2.0 and the last few releases its been going backwards as they try to please the growing hoards who are trying to game it. Plus seems lots of hacked accounts letting people buy huge ships with no effort.

There is a solo mode and a way to play with just friends on a server with NPCs - I find the latter the most fun as there are too many jerks in hacked ships in MP.

To answer your question its ready now as a modern version of the old game with similar paths to the original and a beautiful graphics and sound system. But it's not a truer space sim like Frontier which is a shame.

Not even close to ready really content is dismal at best really and the game feels not sure how to put it (fake) no real persistence in the universe for having to be always online.

They need to hunker down and start adding features and content and stop listening to there forums.

Sorry but X-3 still outshines most of the space sims out there including ED, Something about a whole verse being simulated in a game knowing if you take out that transport that it WILL affect the economy in a very real way.

To me ED seems to be bowing to the arcade bunch now.

 

Sorry but X-3 still outshines most of the space sims out there including ED, Something about a whole verse being simulated in a game knowing if you take out that transport that it WILL affect the economy in a very real way.

 

In their defense, I think they are going for something very different than X3, after all X3 was a pretty poor flight-sim even relative to others in the arcade genre (I'm a huge fan of X3 by the way, so I'm not trying to bash it).  

Other than that I'd agree with your criticism, although I still think E:D is quite an enjoyable game.

The FD forums are definitely an echo chamber of people who think their flight model is the greatest thing ever conceived of, they might be in for a rude surprise when they release.  I have to admit, I am looking forward to lots more people telling them how much better the IWar2 flight model is than the E:D flight model... (admittedly that would require most people to have played IWar2...)

How IW2 model different?

How IW2 model different?

To a good approximation at least, the IWar2 flight model was "Newtonian with a speed limit".  There was an absolute speed (relative to some grid on which stations are stationary) beyond which you could not accelerate.  The speed limit was reasonably high, so that you were not constantly saturating the speed limit (although admittedly other games like Evochron Mercenary have a "higher" speed limit).  Ships also reduce acceleration gradually as they approach the speed limit, so it is not a hard cutoff.  For all objects below the speed limit, momentum is conserved (weapons, however did not impart momentum, as far as I could tell).  There are two big parts of getting a realistic flight model like this right, which don't exactly have to do with the flight physics of the ships.  The weapon mechanics, and ensuring that the rotation rates of ships are just right is crucial, and, in my opinion IWar2 also did these things very well.  (For example, the main reason I'd consider IWar better than Evochron is because of these things, not because of the flight physics, at which Evochron is probably a bit better.)  My favorite thing about this sort of flight model is that you actually get to feel like you are in a spaceship, at least for an instant.

E:D has a completely unrealistic flight model (at least effectively, see below).  There is still a speed limit relative to a grid, but it depends on your ship and power settings (to be clear, the speed limit in IWar is absolute, so that ships engines only affect acceleration as they should).  To make matters worse, your maneuverability depends on your speed, such that your rotation rates are higher by about a factor of two when you are at half throttle (again, depends on your power settings, it is not a speed relative to grid).  This breaks the Galilean invariance (invariance under changes in velocity) in a much starker way than the absolute speed limit, which you will certainly feel.  It also makes things interesting when your ship is automatically nulling lateral velocities, but sadly, and frustratingly, it COMPLETELY breaks "flight assist off" (the mode in which your ship does not automatically correct translational momentum).  The details of how this works, and what FD has tried to do to "fix" the issues it causes, would probably take another two paragraphs to describe, so I'll spare you (if anyone is interested I'd be happy to describe it) but suffice it to say, it's bizarre and feels very, very broken.  When I first started playing E:D, I felt this completely ruined the game, as I most enjoy playing space-sims with flight assist completely and permanently off.

After a little while I came to enjoy the E:D flight model for what it is (after all, I am also a fan of games like X-Wing and Freespace).  Even so, I certainly do not think it is the stroke of genius that most of the people on the FD forums think it is.  FD likes to say that they are "elevating the game beyond realism", but I can't help but roll my eyes at this, since I certainly found IWar2 to be more fun.  Aside from fun, the way E:D works completely precludes one from feeling even for an instant that he is in a spaceship bothers me, one of the reasons I like to play spacesims are the split seconds of suspension of disbelief you get.  I'll simply never have that with E:D.  To me it seems tragic to me that a game which in nearly every other way seems gorgeously real should have such a cartoonish flight model.  And, if IWar was more fun anyway, what exactly are we getting out of FD so bluntly forcing you to play WWII in space?  (why wouldn't I just go play IL-2?).  Obviously, lots of people disagree with me.

Well, after quite a lot of suspicious activity, the Star Citizen flight model finally looks like it is starting to come together.  Perhaps I will be able to find the modern incarnation of IWar there.  It will be great to have such a variety of games with such different flight mechanics, but I can't help but be frustrated that the game that looks so realistic has me flying a P-51 through space, while the pop culture Star Wars likeness of Star Citizen has a semi-realistic flight model.  The irony.

Sorry but X-3 still outshines most of the space sims out there including ED, Something about a whole verse being simulated in a game knowing if you take out that transport that it WILL affect the economy in a very real way.

 

Kinda off topic, sorry about that, but that's just not true. Factions in X2/X3 don't use any form of currency and spawn all their ships and stations for free. Killing that transport, will, at best, influence *your* economy, certainly not the game's.