Elite Dangerous probably is not a bad game... but in my eyes it also is not a good game. In its current state its... "just ok".
After playing it for some time, being forced to have a break from the game for half a year due to a bug (without that the developers seem to care about this game breaking bug which affected a large amount of players) and returning a few weeks ago Id like to give a short overview of what I like and what I really dislike.
EDIT: Moorhuhn yesterday said that my review certainly will be "devastating"... dunno... maybe... IF so then its probably deserved?
I try to be objective on my judgement (I promise).
The positive points of course will come a bit short since I believe that positive stuff speaks for itself while negative points require explanation.
So, whats positive about the game?
- It is the currently only game of this kind (the first next-gen space sim)... so it had a jump start while other games are still in development.
- The graphics are mostly good (mostly... yes... mostly; I will mention the negative part on the graphics a bit later). Especially the use of shaders is done very well which lets the game look very realistic... starting from how suns are rendered... sunlight which changes based on your position or the position of other objects, materials, reflections, etc. That looks great.
- Ship design. The original Elite had very basic ships... infact there was not a ship that had more than 20-30 polygons. This new Elite has the same ship designs. However, due to new details on these basic designs the ship really look awesome. An arrow shaped ship indeed can look interesting if here and there the right details are shaped out of the basic style.
- The game is big. (I will also use this as negative arguement later)
- The game makes use of physics trying to create the illusion that its a real world. (Ill also say a bit about the physics later)
- The game is pretty big (which also has negative effects in my eyes).
- The game is dynamic. You can in theory take influence on the universe if you put lot of energy into this endeavour.
There are certainly a few more good things to say about the game but Ill make a cut here.
What bothers me about Elite?
Lets simply start with the above mentioned stuff.
- I wrote that the graphics are "mostly good".
Why "mostly"?
Because since the Beta screenshots the graphics have been downgraded in many areas of the game. Planets are by default rendered (even on ultra high settings) on a lower resolution than it originally was possible. You can edit game files manually to let the game render these planet textures in higher resolution again but thats actually not what a normal player would know about. The overall quality of planetary textures is... well... *sigh*... ehmm.. it can be improved. The game makes use of spherical textures (unlike what we know from other games -> best example FL). This has the side effect that the texture sizes are limited as the whole texture has to be wrapped around the sphere. Not only does this limit the size of the textures (which in return results in a relative poor resolution)... it also leads to distortion at the poles. You can clearly see such distortion on some kinds of planets in Elite. But ok.
What else is there to say about planets?
Pretty much everywhere you encounter the same type of planets. The diversity is very limited. There is one or two types of ice planets... a redish one... one desert planet... 2-3 gas planets.... thats it. So far ive not seen a rocky moon or molten planet... no water world... no sulfid covered world... no green jungle worlds... no worlds with extreme weather zones (ice at the poles and desert/rocks covering the rest. EDIT: Ive to correct this... Ive seen such a planet today (twice, the same planet twice) With other words... no matter which system you visit you will always encounter the same types of planets. And these planets are not even that interesting to look at. We have beautiful planets and moon in our own solar system. You should not expect to see a saturn marble... a colorful jupiter... or titan like moons in Elite.
What about planetary rings? Our solar system has 8 (9) planets. 50% of them are gas giants. The by far biggest amount of so far discovered planets in our galaxy are gas giants. All gas giants in our own solar system have planetary rings. There are also planetary rings in Elite. So far I have encountered 2 types. Ice asteroids which seem to render a purely white dense disc around the solar body and rocky asteroid rings with a dark semi-transparent look. Ive so far visited just about 900 systems in the game. Yet, Ive not found a ring which looks like the one of saturn... not even one that gets close to that look.
What other objects exist out there?
Sun, of course suns. The surfaces of the suns look pretty good, thats not the problem. Problem are the solar prominences. Good that they are there... bad that these solar flares are rendered in such a low res way that you can see each pixel rendered on a large area of your screen. It simply does not fit to the great looking surfaces of these suns.
Low res textures are a massive problem in this a game.
Another area where you see this problem is the ships cockpit. Putting aside that the cockpits don't look as detailed as on the beta screenshots, the real problem appears when you switch to the free-look. The pilots seat is a pixelated piece of junk. From a game that focuses so much on cockpit interaction (look on the left menu, look on the right menu... look down the the radar... look up to the communication window, etc.) i would have expected more quality work.
But lets get back to what our galaxy has to offer.
The galaxy... wtf is wrong with the galaxy in elite dangerous?
What is this orange pixelated starband (is it a starband?)? Is that supposed to be the Milky Way? Even with a simply HDR cam you can make better images of the milky way in the night sky.
Thats how its supposed to look like: phot-32a-09-fullres.jpg
Which leads me to the next point. Why in gods name does the starsphere look like it has been taken from a 20 year old game?
When you jump into a system or when you launch from a station you can see 10-20 bright colorful pixel dots on your screen. Somewhen later more of these "stars" appear on the screen.
Yes... it takes time for the stars to show up. Dunno, someone has to switch the light on.
I investigated a bit on this issue with cool but ridiculous result.
Cool because the game seems to render the stars based on the position of the nearby star system. Every light dot on the elite starsphere stands for a really existing system in the game. So with other words you could pick one of these light dots and travel there (if you accept that the travel takes 1-2 years).
It is ridiculous because 99.99% of all players dont know about that and would give a fuck about such a grade of realism.
Lets face it... no player would be able to point the finger on one of those stars, switch to the nav map and tell "thats this system". And no player would be able to pick a system from the nav map and tell "oh, thats this star up there".
It is by far the most ridiculous feature of the entire game. It adds no value to the gameplay but comes with the negative side effect that the starsphere looks terrible.
Why does the elite dangerous starsphere look terrible?
Because the amount of stars is a joke. Go outside this night, take a look at the night sky. Multiply the visible stars by 100 and you will get about the amount of stars that are visible in space (coz here on earth the atmosphere and our artificial light sources prevent that you can see all the stars).
Look at our night sky... how many red stars can you spot this night?
How many stars can you spot which have a bright glow around them?
How many rectangular stars can you spot up there?
How big are these stars in the night sky actually?
And now please compare your observation with the crap you get to see in the game.
Done?
Then lets take a look at a somewhat more realistic view into space: s134e010062.jpg
People give a fuck about accurate positions of stars as long the nightsky is beautify and this is a game, not google space. Period!
To way how the game renders stars not realistic, it looks aweful and it costs processing power.
Even CF based on the nearly 14 years old Freelancer game engine has better starspheres than Elite dangerous. The Stars in CF simply look better and also the milky way starband looks better in CF (take a look at Sol). - Holy cow... that much to say about visuals.... next point is about visuals.
This time not about crappy textures... this time about the lack of content.
e.g. the fact that there are thousands of populated systems and hundreds of different factions but all of these system have just 3 types of stations to offer.
There are the outposts which of course vary a bit here and there (a solar panel more.. a station module at the opposite side of the station...etc. ).
Then there are the Orbis stations which also exist in different build levels (main docking module + x rotating components).
And there are the Coriolis stations which are simply said all identical.
In case of the Orbis stations from time to time the station color is different and the ring module seems to have a differnt purpose (manufacturing or agricultural).
Thats it.
There are hundreds of factions out there but some company must have a monopoly on constructing space stations.
With other words... you travel from station to station and everywhere you get to see the same stuff.
Lets just take a look at other space games... e.g. the X universe, EVE or FL... how many different kinds of stations exist there?
(when you now start counting... keep in mind that these games are much smaller than elite)
I would have expected a bit more diversity.
What speaks against having at least 3 different kinds of stations for each of the major factions (Federation, Alliance, Empire)?
What speaks against having different stations based on the different purposes... mining... trading... outposts... military... agriculture... etc.?
Why are there no stations build on asteroids?
The game has a poor diversity and looks very boring as where ever you go, everything looks the same. - And that leads me to my next point.
Asteroid bases... stations in general.
Every station in this game is located somewhere around a planet.
They are ALWAYS placed in empty space orbits. You NEVER see any other solar objects close to a station.
It would be great if stations were placed near asteroid fields. It would be awesome if you could see the rings of a gas giant from such a station but nope.
The game eliminates every WOW-effect by generic positioning of objects. To find a special looking location in this game is an extremely hard (if not impossible) task. - Planets mostly never (mostly never?) have any moons (which is absurd). Our solar system has currently 181 known moons (+ x so far unknown moons).
Moons are common objects in the universe... but the game simply ignores that fact. Everything smaller than an earth sized planet is simply not rendered.
But, maybe thats good this way... considering the low amount of diversity on planatary textures I could imagine how moons would look like (every moon).
Space is large... mostly empty... in my eyes its fatal not to render the most interesting parts of it. - Comets... nvm... I just wanted to mention them.
Ive not encountered one. - Rogue planets... there are estimated 200 billion rogue planets in this galaxy...
nvm, Im going too far. - Lets leave the visual part of my critics and talk about visuals.
User interface.
Ok, you can like or dislike the side menus... no matter what, after some time you get used to it. It adds a good amount of realism to the game so everything is fine with these menus.
I have a few things to say about arrangement, usability and visual style.- Ok, you have a holographic user interface. Thats great. You have exactly the same user interface for each ship. No matter if its a fighter or freigther. These holo images are projected directly over the cockpit.
So whats wrong with that?
It is a bit weird that there are so many different ship manufacturers in this game but all of them seem to have a contract with the software developer of that holo interface.
So many different ships with different cockpits and cockpit shapes and this holo interface is used everywhere.
It does not even fit to all cockpit styles. - Ok... we have this holo interface which floats freely (in midair) inside the cockpit (projected out of nowhere).
When your cockpit glass in the middle of a fight breaches you will completely lose all targeting information. The HUD simply does not work anymore in the broken glass area. However, the holographic interface elements floating in midair (communication, radar, navigation) are still there.
So who did the design error?
Vital HUD elements in combat can fail because of broken glass while pretty much everything else remains working.
Great design... really. - WTF is actually wrong with the design of the HUD? Why isnt this future HUD living up the the standards of the current time. Already back in the late 20th century, fighter planes had HUD elements with lead indicators and target lead indicators. Dont tell me that ~1000 years later this simple technology isnt available anymore.
Whats so complicated in rendering a small arrow on the hud showing where the targeted enemy is located even if its not directly in view sight.
Targeting assist software... 50 lines of code.
Same applies to navigational targets.... there is absolutely no need to fiddle around with the "compass" (Which actually is a 360° radar) if this game would have a clever designed HUD. - Ive just mentioned the radar. OMG! (I apologize if I appear like freaking out atm... its just... *ARGHH*)
From all the HUD elements the radar is the worst one.
The radar looks like being rendered in a 640x480 resolution... reminds me alot on wing commander 1... 20 years ago.
But thats actually not correct Wing Commander had a 360° radar (also known as directional radar) while Elite dangerous has a 3d altitude radar.
A 3D altitude radar is accurate. A 360° radar is user friendly.
What speaks against being user friendly? (rhetorical question)
Elite Dangerous has 360° radar... Ive mentioned it before... its called "compass".
I have another rethorical question for you. "Is it hard to use this compass when you are navigating in systems?"
No? hmmmk!
The main radar in Elite is a mess if you ask me.
It is so hard to locate the targets position on it, especially when you have lots of other targets showing on it.
While I dont have a problem with 3d visualisation and imagination, such a 3d altitude radar can be really hard to interprete for people which lack spatial perception. Such a radar style might be a good idea in a true 3d environment but lets face it, most of us players are looking at a flat screen. We dont see the 3rd dimention... we just interprete it (somehow).
Objects on this low res radar are of course display in a low res way.
A 20x20 pixel rectangle or triangles represent ships. Seriously... i wear glasses... but im not blind. When the game has to render 10 ships in a system then the radar is full.
But ok... maybe that has something to do with the fact that there are completely filled rectangles and triangles and framed versions of them.
People have tried to explain it to me half a year ago... and Ive forgotten it again a day after (I blame the fact that there is no tutorial explaining such stuff).
I believe rectangles are NPC ships and triangles are other players while the fill versions are normal ships and the framed versions are ships with active weapons.
I at least remember that framed triangles mean something bad.
Oh, and there are the low res circles with the weird shit inside... that are runs and planets.
Point is... just at the moment when these object overlap each other you dont see anymore what is what on the radar. Its such a pixel mash that every information gets lost on this radar.
If the developers had used better icons... higher resolution or even different colors... that would have made the radar useful.
Lets simply forget the radar... thats the best you can do. - Station images on the HUD also deserve to get an improvement.
Fact is the developers actually know what to do and how to do it. Fact is they already did what needs to be done... Unfortunatly they only did it on the Corilis type of stations.
When you get docking permissions the station image in the HUD shows a few arrows telling you where exactly the docking bay is. You dont have to fly around the station 5 times trying to find the mail slot. No, follow the arrows and you instantly find it.
Why isnt it possible to create something like that for outposts?
A simple schematic display of the station showing where the docking bay is. - The next thing is probably just a matter of taste. I personally would have prefered if the contact list (which is currently hidden inside the left menu) is directly shown in the HUD so you actually can see which ships and pilots are around you. If you ask me that contact list belongs exactly where the communication window is. Its no big deal putting the player chat somewhere else. Its a matter of priorities... a pilot should be instantly able to see which other ships are around. That has higher priority than a friendly talk with somebody.
- Ok, you have a holographic user interface. Thats great. You have exactly the same user interface for each ship. No matter if its a fighter or freigther. These holo images are projected directly over the cockpit.
- Next topic and this time (hurray) not about visuals.
The game has a story. Hard to believe but it has one. This story is told via galnet news articles.
If I want to read a newspaper then I read a local one... a real one... I dont intend to read fictional articles each day about every bullshit that happens in the game. I play games to experience what happens in the game. I want to experience the story of a game and dont read about it.
There are more than enough sandbox games out there which got that done in a much better way.
More I actually dont want to say about the story since so far ive not encountered anything story related (which pretty much is symptomatic for the problem described above). - NPCs are cheating... yes they do. You can do 100 normal trade missions and absolutely nothing exciting will happen.
But if you accept just one smuggling missions every security force vessel in the system will try to intercept you in order to take a look at your cargo hold. You just need to leave a station and people try to scan you.
The game knows that you have illegal cargo and simply changes the rules of gameplay. Thats cheating. Period! - Before i get to the gameplay stuff id like to point out a few other big weaknesses of the game. Lets start with equipment here.
Equipment is available in different classes and grades while the classes represent the size and the grades represent the quality.
So far so good.
Problem is that equipment descriptions are misleading, partly wrong... or simply missing important information.
What would you say is the most important information about shields?
Yes... of course the shield strength would be the most important information. The capacity.
There are +30 different shields in the game. Unfortunatly the equipment trader has no information about the shield capacities.
The most important information is missing.
You can visit a 3rd party website like coriolis.io and there you can see that a 6A shield has a capacity of 397MJ.
Having such information would be useful IN THE GAME.
Another example are the armors.
There are light armors, reinforced armors, military grade armors, reactive and mirrored ones.
What do they do? Their descriptions reveil very little about the protection they offer.
Well, google is your best friend if you play Elite.
You cant find accurate information about this game inside the game. Thats not possible.
Even if you check the Elite Wiki you will very fast notice that the people which wrote the articles are mostly guessing. You can read very often phrases like "probably it is", "most certainly", "it is unclear if". This is a direct indicator that people which have played this game for many months already have no idea how stuff works. - And that leads me to the next point. The tutorials and the handbook are so well written that they deserve a special place in my recycle bin (arhh sorry, Ive hit the sarcasm key).
The tutorial which consists of a bunch of short youtube vids and a few not very informative tutorial missions, covers only a small fragment of what would be important to play the game.
Nearly everything that would be important to know remains unanswered.
e.g. "How do missions work?", "Whats the difference between the different game zones?", etc.
If you want to know how to play the game... use google.
You are very often forced to make use of other websites if you want to know something.
You are looking for traderoutes... use eddb.io
You want to know if equipment is any good... use coriolis.io
You want to know anything else... reddit
On the net you can find pretty much everything that actually should be described inside the game.
At a point I was told that you "explore how the game is working". Today I have to ask myself how completely missing information can be explored.
An example: I accept a assassination mission. The mission description is telling me to kill "Dr. Sneaky Peak" (which btw. is not my invention; its name which really exists in the game). The mission tells me to do this job within a specific time (1hour). The mission does not tell me where I find this person (not even in which system).
There are 400 billion star systems in the game... 1 hour is a pretty thin timespan to search in all of them.
Even if I assume that the target is in the current system... where do I find that guy? Systems are large.
Do I find such targets close to stations?... in supercruise?... at specific locations? Is there any hint hidden in the mission description?
Google reveils that MANY other players have exactly the same questions.
Some people assumed that such mission targets either spawn in super cruise space or at unidentified signal sources (not at weak signal sources, not at strong signal sources, not at distress calls, not at wrecks, not at nav beacons, not at checkpoints, not at stations, not near combat zones, not all different kinds of resource extraction sites).
"exploring the game" takes longer than the mission lasts, is highly frustrating and certainly a reason why people dont want to play missions. - Gameplay in Elite is a difficult topic.
The gameplay of a game should be motivating, not frustrating.
Motivating in a game can be to level-up, to get new ships, new equipment, to increase ranks, to work for a greater goal.- A greater goal... yeah, that would be something. Ill tell you when Ive found something like that.
- Increasing ranks so far was my personal motivation. Meanwhile I doubt that this motivation is a good one. Good missions require to have a specific rank. Meanwhile I increased my rank hoping that I could play these missions when i meet the requirements. I have the required rank now... the missions are still not available. The mission requirement just has upgraded to the next highest rank.
- Getting new ships clearly is no motivation in this game. New, bigger, more expensive ships are often not an improvement... such ships in most cases are just a burden.
The ship balancing in my eyes is a mess. A 50 mio ship should in my eyes clearly be better than a 6mio ship. You would assume that you get something for your money. Reality however, proves you wrong. Not only that big ships cant dock everywhere, turn slower, have less top speed etc. These ships might even lack jump distances, energy, have mass problems, have incredible insurance costs and sometimes even suck in combat.
I understand that specific ships have specific roles in the game. Explorers have large jump distances, while freigthers are slow and require more jumps due to their mass and cargo hold. But that is no reason to give combat ships jump drives with such a short distance that they would come weeks too late to a battle. Fighters should be able to reach the combat in time and not when scavengers roam the ex-combat zone.
Something is completely wrong with the ship balancing. Its no joy to get a new ship. Its in many cases even not worth it to get a new ship. The motivation to make progress in that area simply gets disturbed.
Why getting a 200mio credit ship if a 10mio credit ship does a better job at pretty much everything.
- I am missing teamplay. I mean... real teamplay. Yes I know that it is possible to form wings. And I know how limited it works. Instancing is a problem... but also the lack of team content. There is not much that requires you to play in a wing.
Ok... three transport pilots could team up and create a convoy. I pirate comes by and demands freight from them all. Yeah, that worked great.
Ok... a transport pilot and 2 escorts create a convoy... the transport guy earns money for the delivery and the 2 fighters wasted their time.
The wing gameplay I have experienced so far has not been very constructive. It was not beneficial for all wing members. It was not even required to be in a wing to get anything done.
The teamplay factor really has to be improved in this game.
In my eyes if people play in wings they should have access to special missions which really require teamplay. One guy does this.. the other guy does that... etc.
And for these special wing missions the players would get special rewards (higher rewards than normal).
Thats a motivation to play together. - Guild/clan support would be nice.
So far there is only a crappy forum moderated faction support solution for that. There is not even a group chat in the game.
All you can do is talk with other players directly or with 4 other wing members.
But what is if you are more than just 5 players?
6 friends want to play together... 5 of them have fun and the other gets mobbed. Thats the current solution.
An ingame guild management is not hard to do.
One guy opens the guild.... the others apply... if enough players have applied the guild is officialy created.
Then the guild can apply for a star system where they want to settle (the developers can create a pre-selection of systems which then get listed to the players).
From that system the guild/clan could try to gain influence... expand... etc.
Not only that it would solve the problem of the guild play and team play.... it also would create a big motivational factor in the game.
But well, the developers seem to be more interested in making the already too big universe even bigger by adding empty boring planet surfaces. - Is the universe too big?
Hell, yes it is.
400 billion star systems. Lets simply do the math.
If you visit a system only for 10 seconds and then travel to the next system you can visit 6 systems per minute, 360 per hour, 8.640 per day (if you play 24h a day), 3.153.600 systems a year... lets assume an average lifespan of 86 years... 271.209.600 systems (from birth to death, every 10 seconds without a break). Thats not 400 billion yet. Thats not even close to that number.
How likely is it to meet another human being on such a journey?
Well, ok... here I have to admit that most human being will be found in a specific populated region of space. That increases the chances highly.
I have been out of the game due to a bug for about half a year... I returned and in the first 3 weeks that I was back in the game Ive seen exactly two other human players.
Is the game universe too big?
Not for a singleplayer game which requires online access. - Under the positive aspects I wrote that it is possible to influence your environment. You really can... you can cause conflicts between factions... you can cause systems to change ownership... you can make governments change... you can help with special projects which have impacts on systems or create new space stations.
Given the size of the game universe, your impact on it is minimalistic. You will never be the big hero that saves the world... you will never be the guy that wins the war.
Is that bad?
Actually not... its just not how the game sometimes is advertised. - Last but not least... lets talk about physics.
Ive read pretty often that people claim that elite has realistic physics.
Ok, we have to definy "realistic" in a new way then. The game has newtonian physics... that is true. Newtons 3 laws really get their attention in the game (not in every situation but in many).
To be physically correct there would need to be gravity. Mass lock is no gravity, disruptive mass is no gravity, the speed reduction around solar objects is no gravity.
You can park your ship infront of a sun without that gravity drags you in. No gravity in elite dangerous.
We actually dont really have to discuss much about real physics when 500m infront of you another ship docks and while touching the landing pad you can hear the metallic sound... through empty space.
The game tries to be so realistic but in so obvious ways it simply isnt.
Im sure that Ive missed some points which bother me... but I think its enough for the moment. Ive tried to be fair. Ive tried not to see everything negative and make constructive critics.
There are reasons for my opinions and it certainly was not bad to explain why I think that some stuff simply does not fit.... and also how I personally would improve that.
