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Elite Dangerous: Horizons |OT| Just scratching the surface
- Thread starter Anton Sugar
- Start date
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
I got into a game of cqc and i played it for 2hrs straight this afternoon and man I love cqc I wish that mode had actually taken off.
There are so many unique mechanics exclusive to it that really make flying in it a total thrill.
-No targeting functions available other than using your contacts panel or target ahead.
This keeps the gameplay focused on using your actual vision and flying skills to track targets which makes encounters way more tense and exciting.
-Lose lock through structures and asteroids
Since the ships are all fragile as hell and do some pretty beefy damage this makes flying into "cover" a very valid strategy and also makes you triple check your radar all the time.
-Everything is much closer range
Your weapons are all only effective at ~1.5km anything past that and they can't even get enough range to graze the target so it really does feel like cqc. Also this might just be me but it feels like the gimbals have a smaller tracking radius which makes them feel more like aim assist than actually lock on.
-Map design is a thing!
Every map is different, the one that takes place in the asteroid field / rings is just the coolest thing, you can weave in and out of the rocks to avoid fire but one wrong turn and you might end up in a wide open space and 3 people will spot you and you just evaporate. Such an awesome change of pace from most encounters in elite that just take place in open space.
CQC is such a thrill I'm gonna join that special discord and see about playing that game mode more frequently!
There are so many unique mechanics exclusive to it that really make flying in it a total thrill.
-No targeting functions available other than using your contacts panel or target ahead.
This keeps the gameplay focused on using your actual vision and flying skills to track targets which makes encounters way more tense and exciting.
-Lose lock through structures and asteroids
Since the ships are all fragile as hell and do some pretty beefy damage this makes flying into "cover" a very valid strategy and also makes you triple check your radar all the time.
-Everything is much closer range
Your weapons are all only effective at ~1.5km anything past that and they can't even get enough range to graze the target so it really does feel like cqc. Also this might just be me but it feels like the gimbals have a smaller tracking radius which makes them feel more like aim assist than actually lock on.
-Map design is a thing!
Every map is different, the one that takes place in the asteroid field / rings is just the coolest thing, you can weave in and out of the rocks to avoid fire but one wrong turn and you might end up in a wide open space and 3 people will spot you and you just evaporate. Such an awesome change of pace from most encounters in elite that just take place in open space.
CQC is such a thrill I'm gonna join that special discord and see about playing that game mode more frequently!
Anton Sugar
Member
They *really* need to integrate it into the main game. Leave the option to simply jump into a random game, but also sponsor competitions at specific stations/systems (since they integrated a lot of the CQC stations in the game w/2.2) with GOOD prizes--like, in the millions, or offering a choice of rare materials/commodities, or even livery pieces.
It would be really cool to take a Passenger mission for a sightseeing tour involving watching CQC. Griefing/security could be an issue, of course.
There's so much more they could do with that mode.
Forerunner
Member
Yup, CQC is great when you get a game. I prefer the combat in CQC over the main game tbh. Shame it didn't take off, but I blame FD more for just letting it die and not giving it the support it needs. There are so many problems with it and they just drag their feet and then they wonder why it's dead. If they actually supported the mode it wouldn't be in the state it is in now.
Damn that sounds fantastic.
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
Yeah I would love for cqc to be integrated into the main game in some way shape or form. I have some footage I recorded of a few matches that to me illustrates what is just so excellent about cqc.
Here is a clip of from a match I had about 2hrs ago, features probably my cleanest flying / pip management all night (even if three of the kills I finished off by ramming lol) you can even hear some salt in the background at one point
however because i am trying so hard not to die it's a bit boring to watch lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-xy3T-Gwn4
Here is one (with some music that got recorded from sound cloud lmao) which has some pretty fun flying from early in the session, I think it was the second game so I am still getting used to things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2-oc6MwKeQ
And one last clip where i desperately tried to go for a win but fell short by a few seconds
https://youtu.be/Vry3Ttv1kkY
You have no idea! If you can find a way into a match one day i'd highly recommend giving it a chance it's like nothing else in this game.
Here is a clip of from a match I had about 2hrs ago, features probably my cleanest flying / pip management all night (even if three of the kills I finished off by ramming lol) you can even hear some salt in the background at one point
however because i am trying so hard not to die it's a bit boring to watch lolhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-xy3T-Gwn4
Here is one (with some music that got recorded from sound cloud lmao) which has some pretty fun flying from early in the session, I think it was the second game so I am still getting used to things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2-oc6MwKeQ
And one last clip where i desperately tried to go for a win but fell short by a few seconds
https://youtu.be/Vry3Ttv1kkY
You have no idea! If you can find a way into a match one day i'd highly recommend giving it a chance it's like nothing else in this game.
Fucking hell even Obsidian Ant is getting in on mocking this timed transfer business
Sounds half-arsed like wings, CQC and Powerplay but with a longer wait between updates. Guess Planet Safari is sucking up all their resources.
Obsidian Ant said:
Sounds half-arsed like wings, CQC and Powerplay but with a longer wait between updates. Guess Planet Safari is sucking up all their resources.
And the official forums are already complaining about multi-crew ship joining being instant and functioning regardless of distance. It's really hard to be excited about incoming features on days like this. Haha.
Traded in my Adder for a Cobra and have started mining. First attempt I didn't have any limpets so went at it picking up the bits and peices myself with my cargo scoop and made around 31,000 credits before I lost patience. Second attempt I got myself some limpets and made around 110,000 credits. Third attempt I was in a crap asteroid field that had bugger all of value in it so only made around 60,000 or so.
It's great fun, will carry on with this tomorrow.
I'm really liking the Cobra too, it's not as much of a killing machine as the Vulture but it handles reasonably well and can hold its own in battle. Got some bloomin great big fuck off guns for it too lol
Might have to look around my internal modules and see what I can do without, I took out a couple of the cargo holds to fit in my refinery and limpet controllers so I've only got 24 tonnes available.
I still can't believe how AWESOME this game is in VR, it's the best VR title released so far BY FAR. Nothing else even comes close to being this good. The only complaint I have is that the pilot looks like a 14 year old child...don't pilots eat ffs..?!!?!? lol
It's great fun, will carry on with this tomorrow.
I'm really liking the Cobra too, it's not as much of a killing machine as the Vulture but it handles reasonably well and can hold its own in battle. Got some bloomin great big fuck off guns for it too lol
Might have to look around my internal modules and see what I can do without, I took out a couple of the cargo holds to fit in my refinery and limpet controllers so I've only got 24 tonnes available.
I still can't believe how AWESOME this game is in VR, it's the best VR title released so far BY FAR. Nothing else even comes close to being this good. The only complaint I have is that the pilot looks like a 14 year old child...don't pilots eat ffs..?!!?!? lol
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
Is this regarding the instant action aspect of multicrew? If it is then it honestly astounds me at how anti fun is this game's community can be.
Either i"m misunderstanding or they are, but the way I read the post all that happens is first you accept a multicrew invite, then your ship gets logged out, then you appear instantly via telepresence at your buddies ship and play for however long. Finally, when you disconnect from his ship you appear right back to where you were.
How is any of that unacceptable?
Gotta get hyped since it's the second last bit of content I paid for, definitely won't be doing the same with the next season/expansion/whatever.
I missed a word, Obsidian's being very sarcastic which in and of itself is new and was meant to be the emphasis. Oops.
I'm pretty sure the thread's mostly taking the piss as well but you never know with these people.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...eaks-Immersion-and-Sets-a-Dangerous-Precedent
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
Oh thank god, if obsidian ant had fallen to the insanity that are the official forums I would have been really disheartened.
Obsidian has always been a supporter of gameplay above immersion bullshit.
But still pretty reserved as far as I'm aware. That statement is open snark towards Frontier and the immersion idiot brigade.
Gave the Hazardous RES a break to see how bounty hunting was inside the persistent Wreckage zone... and wow. This spot has had the densest concentration of high-value bounties I've ever seen, and with police support to boot! Made 4.6 million credits by the time I returned to Roberts Port to refill my cannons.
Distant to whom? Lol. Just because they gave more details on 2.3?
It's a pretty good effort at steering the conversation, especially four weeks out from the beginning of the beta. We know more about multi-crew than how badly the ruins mission is bugged, or if players can even complete it in solo mode.
Not necessary to know how badly it's bugged to realize how boringly it's designed. Better whip out your spreadsheet tool and fool around with every bloody single combination of things lying around on every glowing obelisk, some of which may not work at all for your chosen game mode, to get anywhere. Oh, and Obelisks deactivate after having tried one combination, so log out and log back in to try it with a new one!
That very special brand of quality "Frontier Game Design".
At least the voices of people with half a working brain are getting louder:
Immersion is not realism
You don't fuckin say. Here's hoping the PS4 port will bring in a lot of new people who've been exposed to actual game design before, not just attempts at game design done by people who seemingly had to break off game design elemtary school and that Frontier will get a lot of flak for messing up like they did with the ship transfers in the future. There may be hope yet that they do their bloody job and design a game, where roleplay fetishists are put into their place: optional roleplaying for whoever needs it to stroke their immersion genitalia, not mandatory bullshit fucking up every player's free time.
What on earth is a persistent wreckage zone..? Are they new..? Haven't noticed them before/
I hope the devs take another look at the ship transfer timers while they are focusing on fun first or at least give us the option to transfer to specific stations ahead of time through the galaxy map. If I could ship my stuff to a station whille en route to it, it would lower the tedium quite a bit.
It's for the Community Goal in the Fedmich system. Specific to this one area and time.
Yes but you see this would make actual sense.
Anton Sugar
Member
TBH, being able to remotely say "Transfer from Vulture from X station to Y station" would solve most of my use case qualms with transfers. It sucks to take my Keelback to a bounty CG system, then wait 20-30 minutes for my Vulture to be transferred before I can hop into the action.
Veritigo_X
Member
What do immersion folk say about dying and instantly being teleported thousands of LYs to the last station you visited (not even necessarily the closest one)?
I 100% get wanting the game to be immersive. I only play in VR so of course I don't want random stuff taking me out of it. But I think people on that side are arguing about it the wrong way. "Realistic" things like having to wait for your ship or crew to get to you doesn't add to immersion at all, especially since there's no animation or gameplay to show these things actually happening. You literally just watch a timer get to zero and suddenly a ship is in your inventory. So immersive.
I think the biggest immersion breaker at the moment is the fact that systems seem pretty much the same regardless of their state. If there's a civil war going on in a system I should have to weigh stopping at a station there because shit's fucked. Right now the only difference between a system pulling itself apart over civil unrest and a system in perfect harmony is the text displayed in menus. Maybe the people arguing for timers and annoying things are arguing for this too, I only casually check out the forums so I'm not sure. But I feel like there was way more uproar over ship transfers than actual immersion breakers the game currently has.
I 100% get wanting the game to be immersive. I only play in VR so of course I don't want random stuff taking me out of it. But I think people on that side are arguing about it the wrong way. "Realistic" things like having to wait for your ship or crew to get to you doesn't add to immersion at all, especially since there's no animation or gameplay to show these things actually happening. You literally just watch a timer get to zero and suddenly a ship is in your inventory. So immersive.
I think the biggest immersion breaker at the moment is the fact that systems seem pretty much the same regardless of their state. If there's a civil war going on in a system I should have to weigh stopping at a station there because shit's fucked. Right now the only difference between a system pulling itself apart over civil unrest and a system in perfect harmony is the text displayed in menus. Maybe the people arguing for timers and annoying things are arguing for this too, I only casually check out the forums so I'm not sure. But I feel like there was way more uproar over ship transfers than actual immersion breakers the game currently has.
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
Hey guys what if we tried to organize cqc times in this thread?
I really can't get enough of cqc lol
https://youtu.be/Vry3Ttv1kkY
I really can't get enough of cqc lol
https://youtu.be/Vry3Ttv1kkY
Anton Sugar
Member
Caesar III
Member
Multi Accounts incoming. They use three instances of Elite all themself just to join their own ship crew. Eight pips but the crew members don't do anything (and without turrets they don't need to!) YAY!
oh well. there we go.Joke thread or not: Here we go!
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
Yeah I'm honestly a little worried about that, you could even set up macros that would manage the pips on the other clients with auto hot key easily.
Hell aren't there already a lot of people on the forums who talk about how many accounts they have because they don't wanna wipe their data?
Anton Sugar
Member
So, just to clarify: the Fire Control station is only useful if you have turrets?
And of course, the Fighter station requires a fighter.
It's strange how narrow the scope of this expansion is :-\
And of course, the Fighter station requires a fighter.
It's strange how narrow the scope of this expansion is :-\
Yeah. Kinda blows so far. Hopefully they expand the roles.
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
Actually I hope they expand fighter capability to the Python.
The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it is that multi-crew is the focus on this expansion/major update and it's just turret control and fighter launching. How fucking long did you guys have to think about this and implement something interesting? I really want to see a design meeting at that company just to understand what the hell is going on.
Not Spaceghost
Spaceghost
I really just wanna see compelling group gameplay
Anton Sugar
Member
I'm withholding judgment until beta and more of 2.3 is revealed, but yeeeeeah, it feels a bit hard to justify the 4-6 month delay for this currently.
Seems like it'll be more of the same honestly. Under cooked or uninspired main features but solid QoL changes. Just hurts more because this was their chance to really pull people in if they nailed it and it's looking like they completely missed the mark.
I'm hoping for more dev updates that include features I care about.
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
I've got to be honest, the multicrew is so incredibly lacking in effort that it's been on my mind all day today. I mean yeah I'm disappointed because as an explorer and generally non-combat player, multicrew has nothing at all for me. Nothing at all.
However, what's really bothering me is that complete lack of effort on Frontier's part. This isn't new, lately it's been noticeable in many ways with the work they are doing. The Formidine Rift and Alien Ruins content have both been so badly handled and heavily bug ridden that it begs the question of whether or not they are even doing any quality control work at all at Frontier. That coupled with very anemic features, this latest multicrew being one of the worst culprits, and to the amateur game developer in me this is all just screaming "twilight phase".
It's like where Diablo III is now. It's no longer getting major content developed for it, Blizzard is in maintain mode, slowly trickling in assets and features that were never used from work on that second expansion, making tiny content stuff for each new season, its just a very small team left to work on D3 and keep it going. This is known as the twilight phase of a game's life cycle in the industry.
Elite is starting to feel very much like that. Like the teams working on it are very reduced from what they were, and getting smaller over time. Maybe Frontier has them all working on Planet Coaster now? Or some other new game they have in the works? Elite just doesn't seem to be progressing very fast, season two is WAYYYY behind schedule, and what we are getting is much MUCH less than what we were expecting with season two.
I'm starting to get a bad feeling about this, one I've felt many times previous over various other games over the years.
Dreams-Visions
Member
I'm a bit more hopeful about 2.3 than you guys, I think. I don't know if I'm going to use it much or at all for that matter...but here's hoping.
Nearly lost my brand-new FDL inside the wreckage zone, got greedy with canisters and scant shields. Anaconda or a lot of somethings opened up on me, dropped my shields, killed life support, and left me dancing away from missiles back to Roberts Port with only 25% hull. Have since made build improvements to stiffen my shields further.
If the 'Immersion vs Realism' reddit thread is any indication, Frontier should've at least gotten the message not to pull such bullshit as the ship transfer times again.
I wonder if it's time to bring that topic up as well and see if Frontier might reverse the current implementation to something that's not been designed by a braindead person?
The multicrew discussion should be interesting. They have some explaining to do how they reduced the supported player number and gimped all support roles to the most unimaginative canonical implementations possible. Also why multicrew apparently allows for 2 SLF (even on other ships than the Corvette?), while even having the AI crew to spare only allows for one SLF.
Hard to tell. If you enjoy the base game, you'll probably want Horizons at some point, but it's QoL additions are also in the main game. Just try that. If you find you like it enough, go for Horizons. What you get is mainly more opportunities for grind to improve your ships and the ship launched fighters. For all the flak multicrew might deserve, in the end what's there will probably also be quiet a lot of fun for combat players.
I wonder if it's time to bring that topic up as well and see if Frontier might reverse the current implementation to something that's not been designed by a braindead person?
The multicrew discussion should be interesting. They have some explaining to do how they reduced the supported player number and gimped all support roles to the most unimaginative canonical implementations possible. Also why multicrew apparently allows for 2 SLF (even on other ships than the Corvette?), while even having the AI crew to spare only allows for one SLF.
Hard to tell. If you enjoy the base game, you'll probably want Horizons at some point, but it's QoL additions are also in the main game. Just try that. If you find you like it enough, go for Horizons. What you get is mainly more opportunities for grind to improve your ships and the ship launched fighters. For all the flak multicrew might deserve, in the end what's there will probably also be quiet a lot of fun for combat players.
It does seem to lack...ambition.
Perhaps, but if it works and it's fun I'll take it. Expand more station possibilities down the road.
That's why I'm in the bubble working on my fixed weapons usage, the combat's great and the only well supported part of the game.