Elite Dangerous does not want you, new player...

Yes. A new player.

Yes. A new player rant.

I am not saying, this game is not good or great or 'fill-in-your-favorite-adjective'. And yes, we can skip the "this is ELITE - just like it was meant to be", or "It is obviously not for you", et cetera, et cetera requitals. I was there, when the original ELITE came out (Apple II and Commodore for me). I played my fair share of Wing Commander and Freelancer and what not.

... what I AM saying is ... this game is STILL 'new player' unfriendly AS HELL! But why??

After so many patches and updates, one would think (I should never assume, but I did speculate) that the lack of anything comprehensive or even an accitental, unexpected sun erruption of a of a more welcoming first gaming hour, was on one of those far, far away, lower bullet points of the developers 'to-do list'. But, nay... - all new content is focused on the established core player base. Most likely, reflecting their (your) wishes.

I play all kinds of game genres. I am fairly interested in game design and I enjoy tutorials as an academic research topic, since I believe one of the higher callings in higher education is the ability to COMMUNICATE knowledge from one person to the next.

A video game, which tells you "Go watch a YouTube video", is filing bancruptcy when it comes to game(play) design.

I don't care, how great the game mechanics, how vast the universe, how amazing the later game is; the very first hour is important, in my game design belief. Even if a game does not explain it in-game (RTFM, etc), it has to make an effort.

Tutorial: Dogfight - just dog fight. No need to explain how it works, right? Weapon systems, targeting, convergence/targeting range - is there one??

In the end, there is not a lot to learn, in this particular game. It does not demand reading a 1000 pages (like the DCS World A-10C Warthog manual) and/or understanding real world navigation systems, combat aviation, radar functions (again, DCS World - the finest example of a flight sims), yet what it presents as a 'tutorial' does not deserve that title?

I refer - again - to DCS World, which has some of the more demanding and complicated 'gameplay'/simulation systems, and yet THEY understand how to interactively communicate what to do and how to do it and they find ways to draw new players in, just like Blizzard does, or Valve, or Relic, or any given decent developer.

"There was no money" was an argument before the first two, three patches/updates. Now, there is no excuse.

I really liked my first few hours with the game. The tutorials weren't great but the game is rather simple so it didn't need much more.

It would help if you explained what part of the game you're struggling with.

I played over a hundred hours of Elite Dangerous and personally liked it, definitely a required taste regardless.

I remain willing to give it a chance.

There are 10 tutorial missions that teach you the basics of gameplay, combat, takeoff, landing, and navigation.

In addition there is a roughly 60 page manual that described every aspect of the UI as well as concepts like piracy, smuggling, trading, faction reputation, bounties, etc.

http://hosting.zaonce.net/elite/website/assets/ELITE-DANGEROUS-GAME-MANUAL.pdf

Now that said, I still wouldn't exactly call this an easily accessible game. It's a giant sandbox sim and you are expected to find your own way. This type of game is not everyone's cup of tea. Also, it's easy to forget that this game is still an MMO because there's no monthly fee and you have the option of playing single player, but like all MMOs the best knowledge comes from the community. Figuring out how to do something in that game isn't very hard, but figuring out -what- you should be doing and if it's worth your time can be a challenge.

Where the game falls short in terms of the information provided IMHO is around ship and item stats. The information provided to you in game doesn't sufficiently explain why or how one piece of equipment is better than another in a lot of cases. A Vulture is a small fighter, is far less expensive, and carries fewer guns than an Imperial Clipper but in a straight up fight the where both pilots are equally skilled the Vulture is far more likely to come out ahead because it has superior shields, better armor, and is way more agile. However, this isn't really reflected in the ship specs and on paper using the information provided in-game it looks like the Clippy would be the better ship all around. Similarly, the relative effectiveness of different guns and other equipment often isn't clear just from the stats you can see from the equipment store. Fortunately, there are all kinds of external resources provided by the community to help bridge this gap. EDShipyard page lets you build out a virtual ship with all the possible equipment you can obtain in the game to figure out if it's worth buying that ship -before- you spend any money. Thrudd's Trading Tool lets you find lucrative trade routes without having to land at every station that you find along the way. There are also numerous Wikis that contain all sorts of useful information.

In a game where there are 400 billion star systems, you can play solo if you want but the expectation was never that you'd figure everything out all by yourself. However, if using outside resources to learn how to best play an MMO is a turnoff for you then this game probably isn't for you.

-Byshop

I know little and less about this game: is this one of those games where you start over from scratch when you die?

No, it's not. You have to pay some "insurance" fee depending on the value of your ship (and some other factors), but provided you can cover that you don't lose your ship or any of it's equipment and the insurance is only around 5% of its total value including equipment. However, when killed you do lose cargo that you were carrying as well as any bounty or merits that you had not yet redeemed.

-Byshop

Ok, that sounds reasonable.

Yeah, there is a real possibility of "loss" as a result of dying in this game but it doesn't outright screw you. Just don't overextend yourself by doing something like spending the last of your money on a new ship or dumping all your cash into a cargo load unless you can take losing it all. Only risk what you can afford, just like in life. I never buy a new ship unless I have enough money to afford the ship itself, enough to outfit it properly, and enough to cover the losses should it be destroyed.

-Byshop

Cool, it requires a little strategy and foresight instead of just min-maxing your ship's stats as soon as you have the money.

Yeah. It's also balanced really well in as much as there is no "best ship" so much as "best ships for different roles". The best fighters are shitty cargo ships and the best cargo ships are terrible in a fight. Multi-role ships can be equiped to be good at more than one thing but unless you specialize you might be at a disadvantage against a player who's better equipped for something like straight combat. There's a lot of depth and complexity to this game, and it keeps getting deeper with every patch/upgrade.

It's probably also worth mentioning that the next update that will be out within a few weeks is the "CQC" update, which brings an "Arena Commander" like mode to Elite with a Call of Duty-style progression system.

-Byshop

Yeah, that's the old Wing Commander Privateer formula. Good to see people still like it.

@Byshop: I let some time go by before I hyperjump into the comment section of my own blog post.

The Tutorial, as you rightly say, explains the UI elements. It is a prolonged keyboard mapping spreadsheet. Most of the text is 1:1 from the UI/ Options menu itself. The 10+ pages that ARE helpful are short and leave a lot of room. But it's ok. Nobody can expect today a 1000 page manual (that's why I love DCS World so much, I guess. I even read through the highly technical history of the F-15 Series or the backstory of the P-51D Mustang).

Which leads me to the tutorials. A tutorial - again, the Latin root of the word, which I insist on, since I had to learn Latin in school for four years - is a 'guide'. You are introduced to concepts and ideas, you are told what to do and you THEN are allowed to practice. In it's best implementation, it is interactive learning with someone looking over your shoulder, not you, alone, throwing rocks in a lake.

Elite Dangerous Tutorials are nothing like that. You are dropped into the game and are allowed to shoot stuff. That's it. A complete lack of what a tutorial should be.

Despite this wall of text, I am NOT intending to lecture anyone, and I am certainly not trying to pick a fight with anyone here; it just struck me the other day, how poorly this is handled, in my opinion. I actually enjoy these kind of discussions and even learn a thing or two.

There is this notion in game development, by some factions, that game mechanics explain themselves. But they leave out that there is a price to pay. People unfamiliar with that 'game-language' are left out in the dark, cold space of nothingness.

THAT was what I was talking about. Elite Dangerous served me as an example for a bigger point, I was trying to make. How much it applies to certain players is just as random as the (fake) number of star systems inside the game. If I made a weak case, I stand corrected. No problem.

+++

Oh, and @Black_Knight_00 - btw - when you die (and you have NO insurance), you DO start at the beginning ... from scratch(!) ... as the manual says itself:

"If you have no ships and not enough credits to even pay the bounty or fine you owe at the starport or outpost you arrive after your ship has been destroyed, you are declared bankrupt... (...) ....Effectively, your career is reset, but note that you retain all reputation and rank gained/lost" - Page 111

What you're saying about the insurance is not accurate. You don't go bankrupt from dying and the section of the manual you quoted is pretty clear.

You go bankrupt if you lose -everything-, meaning you have no ships anywhere, you lost your current ship and you can't rebuy it, AND you also have a bounty or fine at the current station that you can't pay off (meaning that in addition to losing everyting you were also breaking the law along the way) then you would effectively be at a negative balance because you own literally nothing and you have fines or bounties levied against you. In that case, rather than let you languish in the red, unable to climb out yourself, the game resets you back to the beginning state. It's not a punishment, it's a lifeline.

You always have insurance and it's always no more than 5% of your total "rebuy" for your equipment and ship. Key word here is "buy" and the initial Sidewinder that you start with along with its pulse laser loadout is free. You can -always- get that back if you are destroyed at no cost, and the free starting loudout is good enough to run beginner missions to start building up your bankroll. Even if you are destroyed, the only thing you can potentially lose is that which you had on you when you died (ship, cargo, equipment, etc) and insurance allows you to rebuy the ship and loadout (but not the cargo, that's lost forever) for 5% of what it original cost. However, if you don't have that rebuy cost in the bank at the time you are killed then you can lose both the ship and your equipment. This does not, however, restart your career.

Here's an example:

I have 10 mil in the bank. I buy a 9 mil ship/loudout combo and decide to do some trading. I buy 900k worth of cargo, leaving me with 100k in the bank. Now, say I get destroyed by pirates, or I crash because I can't land worth a shit, or I get in trouble with the authorities because I pass through a system where I'm wanted, or I get cargo scanned and the cargo I'm carrying is illegal where I'm going, or a player from an enemy faction sees me, etc and I'm killed. Now I'm screwed because I only have 100k in the bank but my re-buy is 450k (5% of 9 mil). I just lost my 9 million dollar ship and equipment because I overextended myself. I still have my 100k in the bank, but now I'm flying away in a starter ship. If I have other ships in the galaxy, though, I can fly my starter ship to where they are and retreive them. The only thing I lose is what I was flying and carrying at the time of my death, and even then the only reason you'd lose it is if because you didn't keep some money in the bank for insurance.

If I had spent 8 mil on the ship and kept 2 mil in the bank, I'd have had 1.1 mil after cargo and been able to cover the insurance just fine. However, my total losses would be around 1.3 mil at that point (400k for insurance and 900k for the cargo).

-Byshop

You mean it's an "acquired" taste. :)

That said I found this game to be nothing more than a docking simulator. The controls made exploring space a chore, especially going between planets and hunting bounties. Meanwhile it's very easy to just keep running illegal goods for a lot of money and very rarely getting caught. I got bored with the game after several hours.

Maybe it is because I was following the game online before release (not that much as I was more interested in star citizen at the time) but In didn't find the game that hard to grasp (especially after changing the default navigation controls to something more reasonable).

@csward: Please don't be a grammar-nazi xD English is not everyone native tongue lol. All the same, you put chose instead of chore.

Haha, touché.

As for the game, it's a big sandbox without a ton of guidance so the expectation is you "make your own fun". Smuggling is always one of the most lucrative ways to make money, but hunting pirates in RES sites, participating in community events, Powerplay, etc. Like any MMO there are "grindy" aspects to build up your cash (which in this game is the only measurement of power beyond your actual piloting skill) and like any MMO I tend to watch TV in the background while I do these activities. It's a sim, at it's core, and like realy life not every moment is an edge of your seat thrill ride.

-Byshop

@Byshop: Suppose that was a tad touche, but don't preach what one can't do xD

& yeah, it's a simple fly and do random stuff game. That's why I've enjoyed it since ßeta. However I had to stop lol. It was getting too addictive.

Ah fixed that thank you. Need to proofread my posts :). Not trying to be a "grammar nazi", I just imagine this guy going around saying things like "beer is a required taste" and getting funny looks, so I thought I'd help you out. Sorry if I offended.

I had a German GF once. To her, it -was- required. :)

Hahahahaha. Not "touchy", meaning oversensitive. "Touché", is a fencing term meaning to acknowledge a hit by an opponent. It's used in "verbal sparring" to acknowledge that the other guy got a good "jab" in. I meant it as a compliment since you corrected the language of someone who had corrected you first.

-Byshop

@csward: Oh, it's alright. I'm aware my English can be flawed at times haha. Was trying to spin the reply into a form of humor :)

i think this is the wrong game for you if you need someone to hold your hand. I really don't get why you thought this was something for you..flight sim games have always had a threshold. it's not for casuals..that being said, this has to be the most noobfriendly one i 've played..i even got a friend of mine into it, and he loves it..this game have the best community i 've come across ..great people eager to help..i even talked to one of the devs on the forum...great guys&great game...