Of course it was a cutscene, it actively blocked ship movement. What else did people think it was?

Dinosawer wrote:Of course it was a cutscene, it actively blocked ship movement. What else did people think it was?

It was a scripted cutscene, yes. Unfolding exactly the same for every player encountering it.
What it could have been though, was actual Thargoid NPC ships flying around, disabling ships and doing their nasty scans in various ways. That would've been more believable and much cooler.
Cutscenes are so year 2000

plillevold wrote:

Dinosawer wrote:Of course it was a cutscene, it actively blocked ship movement. What else did people think it was?

It was a scripted cutscene, yes. Unfolding exactly the same for every player encountering it.
What it could have been though, was actual Thargoid NPC ships flying around, disabling ships and doing their nasty scans in various ways. That would've been more believable and much cooler.
Cutscenes are so year 2000

oh the irony

Cornflakes_91 wrote:

plillevold wrote:

Dinosawer wrote:Of course it was a cutscene, it actively blocked ship movement. What else did people think it was?

It was a scripted cutscene, yes. Unfolding exactly the same for every player encountering it.
What it could have been though, was actual Thargoid NPC ships flying around, disabling ships and doing their nasty scans in various ways. That would've been more believable and much cooler.
Cutscenes are so year 2000

oh the irony

... yeah. But see, there's a in that signature, too

plillevold wrote: It was a scripted cutscene, yes. Unfolding exactly the same for every player encountering it.
What it could have been though, was actual Thargoid NPC ships flying around, disabling ships and doing their nasty scans in various ways. That would've been more believable and much cooler.
Cutscenes are so year 2000

Well, anyways: it would have, indeed, been much cooler. ^^

Elite: Dangerous is on sale for about 20 bucks until the 17th, in case anyone was waiting for a sale for it. I know I was, but even at the reduced price, is it worth it? I like the looks of the pretties, but the game's gotten so much flak over the years. The "mixed" user rating doesn't inspire a lot of hope for me, but I know a lot of you guys have played the hell out of the game.

That only gets you the base game - for planetary landings, multicrew and all stuff that has been added this year you need the Horizons season pass as well. Together tha'[s about 35 bucks. (bundle price, they're more apart)

cuisinart8 wrote:Elite: Dangerous is on sale for about 20 bucks until the 17th, in case anyone was waiting for a sale for it. I know I was, but even at the reduced price, is it worth it? I like the looks of the pretties, but the game's gotten so much flak over the years. The "mixed" user rating doesn't inspire a lot of hope for me, but I know a lot of you guys have played the hell out of the game.

It all depends on what you expect out of the game. If you're looking for glorious, well-thought-through mechanics, a detailed background simulation, dynamic economy, and stuff like that, the game may disappoint you. On the other hand, if you just want to play a game where you truly feel like you're a flippin' spaceman in a flippin' spaceship eking out a living among the flippin' stars, there is no better. You can feel like Han Solo or Malcolm Reynolds or even James Holden with this game if you apply just a tiny bit of imagination. Reason for this is that you can become rather attached to your ship, and there's a huge joy in acquiring credits to upgrade her. You get to know every tiniest detail of your metal contraption conveyance, and it becomes iconic, in the same way that the Millennium Falcon, Serenity, and Rocinante are iconic.

The game's graphics are stunning too, and Frontier has a surprising attention to detail in places you'd least expect it. Like the voice comms; they purposely made them a bit static-filled with nice radio clicks at the start and end of each transmission, which made one newbie I played with totally geek out. However, this attention to detail is sometimes awkward considering that they tend to miss some really obvious stuff. My main career is bounty hunting, and while some call the areas where pirates flock "farming points" because of the infinite spawns of wanted NPCs, I don't mind. pew pew pew pew BOOM

To sum up, Elite Dangerous is a game about flying spaceships. The rest is just an excuse to do so. If you like just flying around in your ship and feel like you could just boost her around and among various asteroids and stations for hours, taking joy in the mere act of flying a spaceship, this game will absolutely not disappoint. No matter what you choose to do in the game or how poorly it's implemented, it won't matter because you're flying a FLIPPIN' SPACESHIP the whole time. If you are unable to get your kicks this way, just from flying a spaceship, the rest of the game may seem bland to you.
--IronDuke

cuisinart8 wrote:Elite: Dangerous is on sale for about 20 bucks until the 17th, in case anyone was waiting for a sale for it. I know I was, but even at the reduced price, is it worth it? I like the looks of the pretties, but the game's gotten so much flak over the years. The "mixed" user rating doesn't inspire a lot of hope for me, but I know a lot of you guys have played the hell out of the game.

Got it for a similar price a while earlier. I clocked about forty hours in the game before giving up. The admittedly pretty cockpit and immersive bits and bobs couldn't keep me, and after mastering small scale smuggling I just couldn't find an excuse to keep going. Take everything below as 'this is how I experienced it for forty hours, and didn't expect it to change for another hundred'.

For a single player game, everything is empty, the grind is forever, and tons of things are just locked away. X3 isn't that much different, yet I played and enjoyed those games far more for some reason. The mission system is deeply flawed, I couldn't deal with how much time I would have to sacrifice for travel for pocket change pay, in order to grind my rank up to accept better missions. This is especially true when I don't even know how far a station I have to go to is from the star: it could be a minute of supercruise, or twenty! Travel is a chore after the first hundred jumps; between your jumps you scoop fuel and get interdicted once in a while by a chump AI with an absolutely ill-fitting name some juvenile person on Kickstarter gave them. Smuggling is a bit more exciting as it requires you to get familiar with real fast flight into the inexplicable letterbox station gates, as well as running silent, but it's marred by the fact that if your illicit cargo is mission-specific, you are not allowed to panic-eject it before a scan!

The ships available for a beginner are hideous, I understand they were going for the whole 'retro' feel, but the flying polygons and cube stations with hi-detail textures just don't do it for me. My Adder is pretty cool, because it at least looks like a run-down crappy RV instead of a wedge of steel. Hard to make it feel like home either, with the pennypinching cosmetic DLCs locking that option away from poor sods like me. Upgrades are mostly numeric, I never felt like any of those were a gamechanger, just that the better jumpdrive allowed me to see fewer stars, thankfully.

For an MMO, the only interaction with other players was cussing them out as they afk'd at a small station's landing pads, denying entry, and the wing system with friends is incredibly inconvenient to use. Even so, players are tough to find, I couldn't even become a proper pirate and had to settle for bounty hunting.

I was honestly trying to have fun without any prejudice, but after the first ten hours of 'wow I'm in space' factor the game just sputtered out for me. Wonder where all the cool stuff is hiding.

My long-range Cobra Mk III was fun to fly, but the game itself has no soul!

Save your money and download Oolite instead.

Cody wrote:My long-range Cobra Mk III was fun to fly, but the game itself has no soul!

This is correct.

However flying with the Wolf Star Raiders remains one of the most fun things I have done in a game. :V

Silverware wrote:

Cody wrote:My long-range Cobra Mk III was fun to fly, but the game itself has no soul!

This is correct.

However flying with the Wolf Star Raiders remains one of the most fun things I have done in a game. :V

If you guys still do that I might get it. If not, then I'll probably pass, despite the wonderful, wonderful pretties

I picked it up again for the heck of it last night, see how far I'll get. There have been a few quality of life improvements, finally I could claim the bounties and pay the fines in systems I had no intention of treking back to And the missions seem to not require you to double back to your employer for the reward anymore, they can wire you the pay once you deliver the goods. Yay! They spawn more often, and the rewards seem to be a bit better, or it's just that without backtracking it seems like they are worth it more? Although it's been a while since I played, and I just passed my final couple of percents to Merchant, so that might also be the cause. My Adder seems to work out just fine, I'm wondering if I can delegate it to passenger duty, and buy and outfit a Type 6 soon.

I was also able to name my ship and give it a short reg number, better late than never I guess :3 The visuals and especially the ship's groans and shakes are still really nifty. Oh, the customizability of controls deserves a praise, after a bit of practice I'm able to deftly work the gamepad just how I like it.

It feels as though everything is wide open and aimless to me still. Many stars and organizations I don't bother to remember the name of as long as there is credits in the job they offer. I will find that adventure, even if it kills me :v

DigitalDuck wrote:Save your money and download Oolite instead.

<chortles> My late-model Cobra Mk III SE (Chromium) is fun to fly, and the game itself has oodles of soul!