Elite: Dangerous

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Discussion

ReallyReallyGood

1,622 posts

130 months

Wednesday 25th February 2015
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Sorry, but it sounds like a terrible-value game if you can get bored of it within a couple of months, especially considering how online-focused and community-driven it purports to be. £40 is not a cheap amount of money to spend on a game!

Berz

406 posts

192 months

Wednesday 25th February 2015
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I've been grinding Empire rep recently. Got up to Squire then it dropped me to Master for no obvious reason. Now I am allied with that minor faction (Citizens of Tradition in case anyone was wondering) so I'm going to migrate to a different group of planets and find another Empire-aligned minor faction to level with instead.

Related, does anyone know what the point of the Achenar system pass is? I got a mission saying here's your pass and to go there. I jumped in, nothing happened, saw that the stations are thousands of Ls away from the sun, and jumped back out. Seemed completely pointless.

PhilboSE

4,356 posts

226 months

Wednesday 25th February 2015
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Berz said:
I've been grinding Empire rep recently. Got up to Squire then it dropped me to Master for no obvious reason. Now I am allied with that minor faction (Citizens of Tradition in case anyone was wondering) so I'm going to migrate to a different group of planets and find another Empire-aligned minor faction to level with instead.

Related, does anyone know what the point of the Achenar system pass is? I got a mission saying here's your pass and to go there. I jumped in, nothing happened, saw that the stations are thousands of Ls away from the sun, and jumped back out. Seemed completely pointless.
Having ranked up all the way in both Federation and Empire, the system permits themselves are pretty pointless. They seem to work only to move you around the galaxy, but you do seem to get more of the "rank up" missions at those points. My plan to rank up is to fly to the latest system that you were given a permit for and then take on any missions within local systems (1 jump away) for factions which are aligned to the entity you are trying to rank up with (Fed or Emp). Make sure you don't do any missions for non-aligned factions. Also make sure you don't do anything illegal as any negative rep is much harder to work off, making you do more missions. Missions which are about reputation gain (e.g. ones where you give rather than sell stuff) are better than trading runs, but just take the ones which are on offer. Basically you should be ensuring that the missions you do result in improved rep with the major faction. I quite often have about 10 missions on the go at once during this phase, gathering up a number of similar missions (e.g. deliver non-lethal weapons) so that I can "score" a number of missions in one go. I quite often fill up my hold with about 12-18t of all the foods, beer, wine, non-lethal weapons and agri-meds, as these are the most frequent demands.

Just keep grinding away at these missions and when you've triggered enough positive rep with the major faction then you'll get the naval advancement option, which is usually trivially simple. Then take the next system permit when it's offered and move on..

PhilboSE

4,356 posts

226 months

Wednesday 25th February 2015
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ReallyReallyGood said:
Sorry, but it sounds like a terrible-value game if you can get bored of it within a couple of months, especially considering how online-focused and community-driven it purports to be. £40 is not a cheap amount of money to spend on a game!
£40 seems to be going rate for a game these days, and it compares very well with many MMO's e.g. WoW etc. It has the benefit of not having any significant in-game purchases either, so you don't have the temptation of "buying" advancement.

For the number of hours of play I've had (many 100's), it seems like a pretty cheap form of entertainment to me. But it is very (self) goal-driven; if you don't feel the need to achieve something within the game mechanics (e.g. buy a particular ship, or get a specific rank) then it might not be the game for you.

PhilboSE

4,356 posts

226 months

Thursday 26th February 2015
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Getting a bit cheesed off with some of the game mechanics now. I'm pretty sure that the NPC combat model is not symmetric. I took on an Anaconda at a RES, my chaff didn't seem to have any effect as his turrets continued to deal damage with apparent impunity. He also appeared to have turreted beam lasers that never overheated and could cause consistent hull damage whereas it took me far longer to attrite him with my gimballed beams (which lose significant accuracy at over 1km). Upshot: a Cr.90,000 bounty and Cr.1,200,000 hull damage to me. With the shield & beam laser nerfing now it's just not worthwhile taking on some of these big targets.

8bit

4,867 posts

155 months

Thursday 26th February 2015
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ReallyReallyGood said:
Sorry, but it sounds like a terrible-value game if you can get bored of it within a couple of months, especially considering how online-focused and community-driven it purports to be. £40 is not a cheap amount of money to spend on a game!
But £40 on the latest Call of Duty tripe which has, at best, 2 or three evenings gameplay in it is better value?

ReallyReallyGood

1,622 posts

130 months

Thursday 26th February 2015
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8bit said:
But £40 on the latest Call of Duty tripe which has, at best, 2 or three evenings gameplay in it is better value?
No but then I wouldn't buy that either. I follow Elite and this thread closely and would consider dipping my toes, but not if people are reporting it becoming a chore/getting bored after only a couple of months.

8bit

4,867 posts

155 months

Thursday 26th February 2015
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ReallyReallyGood said:
No but then I wouldn't buy that either. I follow Elite and this thread closely and would consider dipping my toes, but not if people are reporting it becoming a chore/getting bored after only a couple of months.
Sure, the point I was attempting to illustrate is that two months by modern standards is a long time to still be playing any game really, that was all. Console generation has shifted the landscape considerably.

As for Elite Dangerous, you could consider it a work in progress - Frontier are adding new stuff over time, this is a game that a lot of players will dip in and out of as new features are added. The potential is huge and is being gradually realised.

For me, I get relatively little time to play games since our son was born last summer so am still quite happy spending the couple of hours I get a couple of evenings each week on it. I could see how people with lots of free time could get bored of it right now though.

Just my tuppence-worth.

Grumfutock

5,274 posts

165 months

Thursday 26th February 2015
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What he said. I am one of those taking a break but, as Arnie said, I will be back.

I have played this endlessly for over a month and just need a change for a bit.

motorizer

1,498 posts

171 months

Thursday 26th February 2015
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Same here, I can see myself dipping in and out of this for years, but with breaks of weeks or months every now and then.

The fact that it has no story and no ending helps, you can leave it for ages and just pick up where you left off without having to remember what was going on.

Einion Yrth

19,575 posts

244 months

Thursday 26th February 2015
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motorizer said:
Same here, I can see myself dipping in and out of this for years, but with breaks of weeks or months every now and then.

The fact that it has no story and no ending helps, you can leave it for ages and just pick up where you left off without having to remember what was going on.
Those more cynical than I might argue that that is because nothing was.

Baron Greenback

6,982 posts

150 months

Thursday 26th February 2015
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Update on what is coming! I am trying not to overdose on gaming to make the game last longer!

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=118...


castex

4,936 posts

273 months

Thursday 26th February 2015
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Baron Greenback said:
Update on what is coming! I am trying not to overdose on gaming to make the game last longer!

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=118...
Looks good to me thumbup

geeks

9,188 posts

139 months

Friday 27th February 2015
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As an Elite noob with only a couple of hours a week tops to spare, I am still enjoying the game biggrin

grenpayne

1,988 posts

162 months

Saturday 28th February 2015
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Chaps, given the newsletter update about the Wings update, is anyone up for forming a PH Wings group? I certainly am and now that I've got myself up to a reasonable standard (in terms of ship and status) I think it would be pretty interesting.

PhilboSE

4,356 posts

226 months

Saturday 28th February 2015
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Went to bed a Master, woke up as Dangerous!



Now I suppose I should cash in some bounties...


Baron Greenback

6,982 posts

150 months

Saturday 28th February 2015
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Congrats!

FLK

196 posts

198 months

Saturday 28th February 2015
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Nice work, did some combat zones recently and the payouts are better but I'm currently grinding 55 million in a Type-7 to get a Python so I'll be at Expert for a while yet I guess. I'd be interested in teaming up though for when Wings comes out.

Edited by FLK on Saturday 28th February 13:57

wolves_wanderer

12,387 posts

237 months

Saturday 28th February 2015
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My explorer Asp is pretty much done but I want to get some decent use out of my kitted-out Viper before I disappear into the yonder. Where should I be going, frontier systems I guess?

Another question, what is the best loadout, med lasers and small guns or t'other way round?

Edited by wolves_wanderer on Saturday 28th February 15:39

Mr Happy

5,695 posts

220 months

Saturday 28th February 2015
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I bought this the other day, did a few of the training missions then jumped into MP, launched my space ship (after wondering why it wouldn't let me before doing my 'pre flight checks'), and made for the first planet I could see.

It was going to take something daft like 30 days to get to it, so figured out how to use hyper cruise (I think) and got to within 4 hours of it, but it dropped out of cruise as I was too close.

I'm now stuck, do I wait 4 hours to slowly fly into the planet or is there something else you do in order to get down onto it? Can I just mine away or is there something else I need to do?

I've got the starter kit, so 1000 credits and pew pew lasers - that's it.

Help!