Postby JohnMarchant » Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:46 pm
Well here's a necropost for you. I got ED when it first came out and joined Mobius some time ago, i had played Elite back in the 80's on a Commodore 64 if i recall. I only really played ED infrequently and then about 3 years ago i just stopped playing. Did the grind, got my fully equipped Conda and some others but really did not get much into it.
I started playing Star Citizen about a year ago, and it was always in the back of my as to where ED was now in comparison. Well firstly there really is no comparison apart from its in space and involves similar things and missions.
So when i heard about Odyssey i thought i might pick it up and see how it is. Well i got a shock to be honest, i was really quite surprised at how dated ED had become, considering ED and SC came out a similar times. Now SC is still in alpha, and yes ive heard all the complaints and even accusations of lying, cheating and that the game will never get out of alpha. Some of it true, some of it pretty wide of the mark.
So having played SC for a bit and have now gone back and tried ED in Horizons and Odyssey here is my take on the state of play.
SC looks modern, sleek and beautiful, ED does not, it looks even older than it actually is. I mean this graphically on screen. SC have ships with interiors you can walk around and interact with. It has different cockpit UI's for different ships, not ED on size fits all.
What SC has is depth, i might argue in a way to much depth, its more akin to Eve Online and Cyberpunk 2077 than ED. What ED has is breadth, in the scale of the universe and such, ED wins hands down in that department.
The problem i also find is it seems to have lost its way in what it was originally intended to be. At its heart it is a space trading, exploration and discovery sim, with some combat and such thrown in. Combat now seems to be the order of the day and its even more evident in Odyssey.
Now i'm not saying this is a bad thing, to each his own, however the core game seems to be very repetitive and to an extent boring now, especially in solo or private group.
I will give you an example, this is one of many i have seen just in the last couple of weeks.
I went to a station cant remember the name, landed and then the administrator blurb said they have a water shortage, people are dying of thirst. I had good relations with them so thought i would help out. Went to the mission board to find some supply water mission, not one, not one even remotely about water, water treatment or anything. That seemed a little odd to me. The kicker was really when i went to commodities, they were selling water.
I've seen several like this where the station narrative does not fit the missions and commodities they are buying or selling. It seems its just a blurb and means nothing at all in the core game.
Do i think Fdev will ever change this, well from what i see not likely any time soon. Now it seems to be about selling DLC and if it can be done within that then it might happen but i also doubt it.
My reasons for the doubt are simple but also point to the underlying problem.
Some time ago, many people had been asking for the ability to walk around their ship interior, after all why not its where you spend a large portion of your time, especially as a new commander. FDev replied that people were not interested in that and that it would bring nothing to the game, or words to that effect. That statement there pretty well summed up what was going on. Firstly many people had asked for this, so i don't know where they got the idea that no one really wanted this, but i suspect i know as do many others i would imagine.
I think ED for those of us who have been using it for some time is a game of the past, you can enjoy it as it is now or not, but its moved on and is not really the game i grew to love all those years ago.
Money talks now and anything that can be monetized gets the shareholders seal of approval and its no longer about that we want.
Anyway figures do not lie, Frontier the last time i looked had made around $100 million since it started, that's all iterations of the game. Star Citizen has $350 million of backing, for a game that is still in alpha and god knows if it will ever leave alpha, but it sure looks beautiful, if a little buggy still. Wonder how much if that money came from ED or Ex ED players, quite a bit i would imagine.
Any im still around at Raffery's Mobius if anyone wants to say hello.