Newb’s Take on the Game

Ok, so I've finally been bitten by the Elite Dangerous bug….but it took quite awhile. I kept seeing amazing pictures posted from players while flying through space and downloaded it on a whim 2-3 months ago. I quickly got overwhelmed with all the controls and had zero idea what I was doing. I watched a few of the tutorials in the game and played through them but if you don't start playing and immersing yourself immediately, you quickly forget all the details. So, I put it down for a few months and finally sat down one day and watched about 2-3 hours of tutorials. Then, I started playing it again and started getting the hang of things.

My first big gripe was the amount of time that it takes to fly from point A to point B. Even within the same system. I kept seeing people say how "relaxing" it is, etc.. but I really couldn't wrap my brain around this…at least initially. Finally, after doing a few missions and accumulating credits and analyzing the multiple possibilities of ship builds, I started getting pretty interested in the game. Then one day…I picked a planet in the system that was about 100K Ls away and hit supercruise and just…..relaxed. I surfed some Inara on my phone, checked my email, enjoyed the sites, poured a little bit of scotch and just kicked my feet up. I think I finally get it now. The game is really not meant to be rushed. It actually IS very relaxing.

I'm still pretty new to the galactic politics and so far most of my missions involve bounty hunting which I seem to be fairly decent with on my xbox controller. However, I'm really starting to have a blast playing the game. It does seem like a colossal Cr grind with rehashed missions that are all the same but hopefully it takes awhile before too much gets stale. I started out in my sidewinder, upgraded to an Adder, then a Cobra, and then upgraded to a Keelback of all things. I'm currently running a fighter out of the SLF bay and and that's so much fun. I also use it as a secondary transport ship. The cockpit is huge and I love the FOV. It kind of feels like a sister to the Millennium Falcon.

Anyway, I'm happy to see so many people playing the game at 1 and 2K hours later. That gives me some confidence that I'll continue to enjoy it. It's not the best "casual" play game where you can pick it up for a few minutes and then put it down like Apex, etc.. and I have a pretty busy schedule as it is but I can knock out an hour here and there and that seems to give me adequate progress. I do wish that there was a better integrated multiplayer and that you actually saw players more regularly or had ways to interact with them and were given incentives to do missions together, etc.. I think it would be fun to have big corporations or clans that carried out covert missions against another syndicate power, etc.. similar to EVE, etc.. I'm not quite sure what to expect with the Beyond expansion as it seems to have gotten bad reviews. Hopefully, Frontier irons out all the wrinkles before releasing for consoles.

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Funny story: I upgraded to the Keelback before I had enough money to upgrade all my modules and I was so excited when I bought it that I launched myself from the space station only to discover that it didn't have a pilot assist and I had never piloted within a space station. I barely made it out and upon receiving docking request at the next station….I got ticketed for loitering at the entrance, crashed into just about everything in the station and finally managed to land the sucker without killing myself. I don't know how some of you do that so naturally. I'm actually fairly decent in combat but my flying skills in and out of orbital stations just sucks. I think I'll always have an active module for flight assist!