Out of Pod Experience

You forget EVE is social based more then anything else. Games like Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen and X:Rebirth are all Combat driven. Think them more like World of Tank, Planes and Ships. Social base seems very limited.

EVE is a real civilization in terms of gaming. It will take years for them to exploit and become EVE like community. By then EVE will evolve to something new like it always does. Specially since they have become more focus to EVE, rather than Valkyrie and 514.

I have some news for you: socializing on the internet was one thing in 2003, and is a completely different beast in 2014. Today, the line between "other players as an asset" and "other players as a liability" is quite blurry, specially since the average Joe from 2014 socializes a hundred times a day from his smartphone and doesn't needs any jerk backstabbing him after several months of building up trust and virtual sandcastles.

You should go meet up with Star Citizen supporters, if you got the balls.

Me too! I'm having a blast in the game and yes it's great with the HOTAS. I haven't been vaporized by a station yet! Say hi in ED (Celeste), we'll go shoot some pe.. I mean fly and stuff

I have Elite - it strongly reminds me of EVE in 2004-6. It look very promising but also it's unintuitive, does not have tutorials, has unnecessary and stupid mechanics from "good ol' days" (asking stations for landing permission, manual retraction of landing gear, etc.).

Lack of 3rd person view isn't fun (why do people even care about cosmetic skins for ships having this mode?). Flying back and forth with full cargo of fish becomes very boring very fast. I'll continue playing STO unless Frontier will create avatar gameplay with third person view or (maybe) colony/outpost building.

Here is some pointers, after trying out Elite Dangerous, to anyone considering partying with their hard earned cash.

To those that don't read the fine print, and believe that Elite Dangerous has any resemblance to an "MMO" that it claims to be.... forget, it is not.

Let's start with the world model:

* 400 billion systems, (rumored) 70,000 inhabited.
If you think finding targets in EvE is hard, try doing that in Elite. Good luck actually finding real players. The game is designed from a single-player perspective, and the world is populated, but by NPCs, taking role of local security, trade haulers, bounty hunters and pirates: all NPCs.

* Next comes the instancing.
Here it is quite similar to Star Citizen, and works more like an FPS rather than an MMO. You connect to a server/instance/island, and that server/instance/island can only hold 32 other players (NPCs don't count), like an FPS server being full. I understand it's a necessary evil for performance reasons, but both SC and ED leave much unanswered here.

This is one of those things that I will mark as "let's see how it works". However, here is my view at it now. Want a "fair" fight? Get 16 people into group, and look for like minded group on some instance. Want to blob? Get a 25-player group and find unsuspecting few people. Want to never ever worry about risk of other players? Get a 32-player group, and your instance will be "full" to anyone else. But wait, there are "better" ways to avoid people.

* I am willing to see how the instancing works out, however what I am not willing to accept is the ability to "escape" from an instance simply by loading another.
So you jump to a station, in your hauler with no weapons, and there is a combat blockade. What do you do? Do you take responsibility for your stupid actions of flying un-escorted and unarmed into what amounts to be a 0.0 system? Nope, you simply jump out and jump back in, and you would have loaded a different instance, which may or may not have the enemy blockade. Avoiding risk by one-step-short-of-logout. But wait, like I said, there are "better" ways to avoid people.

* Solo online mode.
If you think that everything upto here doesn't really break the "MMO Open Sandbox" part, wait till you hear this. You, at will, can go "Solo", which means you will never see another player, nor will they see you. You still play in the same Universe, but in some kind of "shifted phase", so you don't interact with anyone. Imagine playing EvE, seeing local spike, and just flipping "I am invisible" mode and continuing on your merry business. This is not a "Solo server". This is not a "solo character". This is a "flip-of-a-switch-leave-me-alone" solo mode, that retains all your progress, but allows you to play risk-free, and once you've made enough money to go back to "open world", and then run away to "solo" again.

* No market economy.
Economy? What economy? There is endless credits faucet with no sinks. By from NPC orders, sell to NPC orders. Instant profit (no time to wait for the order to be sold). And they've made it clear that actions of a single player will never affect the economy prices. Only when a large percentage of population trades a commodity would it's price be shifted. "Dynamic player influenced economy" my ass.

* No territorial control.
All that space, and you can't even block an entrance to the station cause [see instancing].

So, with everyone doing all the credits grind risk-free in solo/private-group modes, and people only jumping to "open world" mode for PvP, there won't be half the advertised game content (pirates, bounty hunters, mercenaries, security, unknown dangerous space ahead).

It will be a single-player/co-op game, with a PvP arena.

OP is a lunatic to say "Elite is everything EvE should have been". That only works if you expected EvE to be a single-player flight-sim.

There is no "MMO" in Elite Dangerous. It is a single-player game with a multi-player option

Dangerous? Ha. Harmless!

Try again. Research the famously quoted "DDA", like that's some fraking gold bible, on how they say it will work.

The only thing that's persistent is your character and your cash.

When you are not in station, hyperjump, or supercruise, you are loaded into an instance of 32 players max. Don't like who you've been paired up with, change session and you may get another instance with different set of players. They are "persistent" through the universe, but you will only see a max of 32 other players around you. And I am not talking about "seeing ship models" here, you won't be aware of the existence of the other 32 players from other instances at all.

Similarly, when you play "Solo-group", "private-group", or "all-group", it's the same character/cash/universe, but you can basically decide (upon session change), to be playing completely alone, in the same solar system in the "persistent universe" as others who are playing in another instance with 32 players.

Imagine going to Jita, but seeing nothing but customs officers and rats, yet having all the same market orders. Not that it would matter in ED, as there is no player market.

Oh and did you know that 95% of statistics are made up on the spot

That is without a doubt the most horrible thing I've ever heard of in a game.

Unfortunately, the marketing material calls it "MMO" and a lot of people will buy it for its false pretense (like I did), hence my warning.

Doesn't help when people like the OP come here and preach that it's everything that EvE should have been. In fact, it's everything that EvE isn't (including the forum population of selfish anti-social single-player carebears that have been rejected from every possible multi-player community). Totally different, with the only common part being "space theme".

There is room for both, absolutely.

P.S. get this: saying "carebears" there will get your post removed and a warning issued. Yet they spew "griefer" at anyone that even thinks of interacting (i.e. shooting) with another player.

An "I am invisible" switch - like a cloaking device with no local?




If CCP wants Eve to be immune to ED, all they have to do is let every ship dial in a Point A to Point B warp like we see them do in Star Trek, Star Wars (etc.).