• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Elite Dangerous: Horizons |OT| Just scratching the surface

Volimar

Member
Wanted to start as an explorer on ps4, outfitted my ship with a scanner and... no luck, no new data, I guess since powerplay is in play there's no point in trying to scan anything within its confines, but then again, how am I to get any money as an explorer if my ship can't make the jumps necessary to leave those system... ehhh...

Guess I'll go with the good ol' bounty hunter in some low threat areas.

As a new player, exploration data is good money, even if you're not the first to discover something. But there's no denying that bounty hunting (at nav beacons for beginners is really good) is the fast money.
 

DrBo42

Member
New guys should add each other and wing up. Do some pirate hunting in RES sites or try getting some combat bonds together in a Civil War or War system. Last I checked payments were full value among wing members, no? Wish there was a fleet or corp system in place for y'all to meet etc.
 

B-Genius

Unconfirmed Member
ObsidianAnt did sort of a general introduction for the PS4 version. Nothing in here for current players but a good overview for new players.

Just watched this. Seems really cool! Much more sim-like than NMS to say the least.
ObsidianAnt's voice is soothing. Really fits the tone and structure of the game, and he explains things at a nice pace.

I laughed when there was a traffic jam of new players waiting to deliver that data at the first space station. Seems like you should be able to "drop off" data without having to land. For shipping physical cargo parking makes sense, but having to switch to solo mode for something so trivial is a bummer as you lose all the wonder of playing live with others.

My immediate impression is that this is like a "1st person EVE Online", while NMS is more of a survival game with (relatively) arcadey space travel. Would that be a fair assessment? I loved EVE back in the day, and if this gives a similar feeling of overwhelming possibility in a massively multiplayer environment, then I think it could be for me.

If a friend and I were to get this and buddy up from the start, could we be manning each others' wings in good time? I imagine there are a lot of ropes to learn, but would be great to form a small crew and travel together for the mid-long term. Can friends benefit from others' activities while not playing/online?
 

jiiikoo

Banned
Why can't I plot courses in the galaxy or system map. Everytime I select a system, no matter how near or far, it says plotting failed.
 

DrBo42

Member
Just watched this. Seems really cool! Much more sim-like than NMS to say the least.
ObsidianAnt's voice is soothing. Really fits the tone and structure of the game, and he explains things at a nice pace.

I laughed when there was a traffic jam of new players waiting to deliver that data at the first space station. Seems like you should be able to "drop off" data without having to land. For shipping physical cargo parking makes sense, but having to switch to solo mode for something so trivial is a bummer as you lose all the wonder of playing live with others.

My immediate impression is that this is like a "1st person EVE Online", while NMS is more of a survival game with (relatively) arcadey space travel. Would that be a fair assessment? I loved EVE back in the day, and if this gives a similar feeling of overwhelming possibility in a massively multiplayer environment, then I think it could be for me.

If a friend and I were to get this and buddy up from the start, could we be manning each others' wings in good time? I imagine there are a lot of ropes to learn, but would be great to form a small crew and travel together for the mid-long term. Can friends benefit from others' activities while not playing/online?

There's some EVE I guess but it's missing anything that makes EVE great like Corps or a player economy. Similar in player driven stories.

Players can benefit by winging up together and hitting Resource Extraction Sites or Conflict Zones, making money together. Mining also to a lesser extent by getting more ore if you all fire at the same rock. Or at least it used to work that way. You can get trade dividends if you all dock at the same station and sell commodities too.

Why can't I plot courses in the galaxy or system map. Everytime I select a system, no matter how near or far, it says plotting failed.
Filters on? Maybe your jump range is just too low to make the hop between stars in a specific path.
 
Currently using my Sidewinder to make enough credits to get a Hauler. Does buying a new ship include the basic parts like I'm used to in the Sidewinder?
 

forms

Member
Thinking about double dipping this. Can you purchase and start with bigger ships, or are you stuck with the beginner sidey?
 

DrBo42

Member
Is Multi Crew any good? Can anyone look for a ship to do some bounty hunting or are there restrictions?

You can indeed. Restrictions are to your rewards via combat rank and payouts are terrible for anyone that isn't the pilot. Way better to jump into a Wing and gain money that way. But if you just want to fire turrets on someone's boat I guess that's up to you.
 

Kyoufu

Member
You can indeed. Restrictions are to your rewards via combat rank and payouts are terrible for anyone that isn't the pilot. Way better to jump into a Wing and gain money that way. But if you just want to fire turrets on someone's boat I guess that's up to you.

Well, that's a shame. I was hoping the matchmaking would speed up the process of bounty hunting as a group and be a viable way to farm credits. Oh well.
 

B-Genius

Unconfirmed Member
There's some EVE I guess but it's missing anything that makes EVE great like Corps or a player economy. Similar in player driven stories.

Players can benefit by winging up together and hitting Resource Extraction Sites or Conflict Zones, making money together. Mining also to a lesser extent by getting more ore if you all fire at the same rock. Or at least it used to work that way. You can get trade dividends if you all dock at the same station and sell commodities too.

Thanks! Been reading a lot of stuff on the official forums and it seems like ED does have it's own equivalent of a player economy (a universal economy that shifts depending on player activity) and corps (albeit in "meta" form outside the game world). But anyway these aren't things I'm greatly concerned with for now, and not what made EVE for me personally.

Winging together sounds good. If you're in a wing do you automatically accept the same missions, or just pool the rewards? Would like to know more how that works.
 

Burny

Member
Winging together sounds good. If you're in a wing do you automatically accept the same missions, or just pool the rewards? Would like to know more how that works.

Here comes the kicker: Taking missions as Wings is not supported. And it hasn't been, since Wings was introduced shortly after the vanilla release. Edit: Not to mention that pre 2.2 (release two years after Wings update!), "winging up" meant that your payouts were practically divided by the number of players in your wing. No, there never was an enemy or reward scaling of any sort for wings and you can practically do everything alone. In 2.2 they realized that was an idiotic penalty discouraging cooperative PvE and introduced full symmetric payouts as a crutch.


There are few missions you can sensibly do as a wing, but it's a bit of a pita. Namely massacre missions, but everybody has to take the same mission by themselves and then you can go to a conflict zone (unstructured pub brawl in spaceships, Elite's representation of a "war" *rollseyes*) and kill your targets together. Have fun finding appropriate places to do it though, as the game doesn't tell you shit. There's a system in a war state? 15 minutes to go there, another ten to check out whether it has appropriate missions and conflict zones, another 20 minutes to get your friends there. That's assuming you hit gold on your first try. Want to do another run the next evening? Oh, we're sorry, the war state has just ended (lasts some 3 days iirc?) and the missions have dried up. Better luck next time!

It's good fun when it works, but the whole experience is so cumbersome that we've stopped bothering. Evening game time with friends has turned out to be more valuable than that for us.
 

DrBo42

Member
Thanks! Been reading a lot of stuff on the official forums and it seems like ED does have it's own equivalent of a player economy (a universal economy that shifts depending on player activity) and corps (albeit in "meta" form outside the game world). But anyway these aren't things I'm greatly concerned with for now, and not what made EVE for me personally.

Winging together sounds good. If you're in a wing do you automatically accept the same missions, or just pool the rewards? Would like to know more how that works.

Yeah like Burny said above, it's not exactly a pick up and play experience either alone or with friends. Winging up isn't very streamlined or explicitly supported via the mission board. Essentially you'd have to all dock at the same station and accept the same missions. Winging up in a Conflict Zone or a RES site is far more intuitive and easy to accomplish.
 

Burny

Member
Yeah like Burny said above, it's not exactly a pick up and play experience either alone or with friends. Winging up isn't very streamlined or explicitly supported via the mission board. Essentially you'd have to all dock at the same station and accept the same missions. Winging up in a Conflict Zone or a RES site is far more intuitive and easy to accomplish.

And oh god noes, there possibly could never be a global chat in Elite Dangerous (or an inter-instance, system local one...)! Appropriate means of communication and social interaction other than shooty shooty bang bang!? Not on the immersion idiots' watch! Think about all the gold farmers that would ruin the experience for everyone, if there was a global chat.

banging.gif~c200
 

ookami

Member
what advantage is there to get the Horizon season pass early

  • Planetary landings + SRV + associated gameplay
  • Engineers (ship's module customization)
  • Crafting from materials
  • Passenger transport
  • Ship-launched fighter
  • Multicrew
  • Holo-me (character creation)
If you put the grind aside and your starting budget in the game, I'd say you're missing multicrew, holo-me and passenger transport.
Planetary landings is more like an alternative right now unless you want to dig in Thargoid story which makes it mandatory I guess.
 
  • Planetary landings + SRV + associated gameplay
  • Engineers (ship's module customization)
  • Crafting from materials
  • Passenger transport
  • Ship-launched fighter
  • Multicrew
  • Holo-me (character creation)
If you put the grind aside and you're starting budget in the game, I'd say you're missing multicrew, holo-me and passenger transport.
Planetary landings is more like an alternative right now unless you want to dig in Thargoid story which makes it mandatory I guess.

Also you get a new starting vehicle choice that starts at a moon, and the ship includes gear for planetary landing and also a buggy.
 

Kuraudo

Banned
Is the second tutorial bugged? Every time I get close to the station, I drop out of supercurise when prompted to and am then told to request docking. But then I get told I dropped out too early and need to jump away and try again.

After the second time, I went ahead and boarded the station anyway. But because the tutorial is no longer telling me what to do I'm stuck hovering an inch above the landing pad with my landing gear down unsure how to actually land :p
 

Reckheim

Member
Is the second tutorial bugged? Every time I get close to the station, I drop out of supercurise when prompted to and am then told to request docking. But then I get told I dropped out too early and need to jump away and try again.

After the second time, I went ahead and boarded the station anyway. But because the tutorial is no longer telling me what to do I'm stuck hovering an inch above the landing pad with my landing gear down unsure how to actually land :p

It'll give you a message on your screen if you are close enough to drop, if you do it too soon you can end up too far from the space station.
 

dinoroar

Banned
Is the second tutorial bugged? Every time I get close to the station, I drop out of supercurise when prompted to and am then told to request docking. But then I get told I dropped out too early and need to jump away and try again.

After the second time, I went ahead and boarded the station anyway. But because the tutorial is no longer telling me what to do I'm stuck hovering an inch above the landing pad with my landing gear down unsure how to actually land :p

This happened to me too. Make sure you've got the right place targeted (city I think? I was trying to land on somewhere incorrect for ages, anyway) approach the station and keep an eye on the two bars in the lower left. If you don't do that task at hand it'll all fail.

Once you've nailed dropping out of hyper speed or whatever, keep the station targeted, look left and goto "Contacts", highlight the station and request landing permission.
 

Reckheim

Member
This happened to me too. Make sure you've got the right place targeted (city I think? I was trying to land on somewhere incorrect for ages, anyway) approach the station and keep an eye on the two bars in the lower left. If you don't do that task at hand it'll all fail.

Once you've nailed dropping out of hyper speed or whatever, keep the station targeted, look left and goto "Contacts", highlight the station and request landing permission.

One thing to add; You'll only be given permission to land if you are withing 7.5k of the station. Otherwise you'll be denied.
 

Kuraudo

Banned
It'll give you a message on your screen if you are close enough to drop, if you do it too soon you can end up too far from the space station.

It does that though and the tutorial voice tells me I'm close enough. Then as soon as I drop out he tells me I'm too far away. Really furstrating as I feel like I'm doing something wrong but the game won't tell me what.
 

Kyoufu

Member
It does that though and the tutorial voice tells me I'm close enough. Then as soon as I drop out he tells me I'm too far away. Really furstrating as I feel like I'm doing something wrong but the game won't tell me what.

As above, you need to be within a certain distance to request docking, so once you drop out of supercruise, fly towards the station and once you're close enough you can request to dock successfully.

Also if you don't want to deal with the docking itself, you could buy a docking computer for your ship to do it for you.
 

Reckheim

Member
It does that though and the tutorial voice tells me I'm close enough. Then as soon as I drop out he tells me I'm too far away. Really furstrating as I feel like I'm doing something wrong but the game won't tell me what.

Ok, I think I see what you're getting at. It probably tells you you're too far to request a landing pad.

Fly withing 7.5k of the station and request a landing at that point, you should be given a landing pad at that point.
 

Kuraudo

Banned
As above, you need to be within a certain distance to request docking, so once you drop out of supercruise, fly towards the station and once you're close enough you can request to dock successfully.

Also if you don't want to deal with the docking itself, you could buy a docking computer for your ship to do it for you.

Ok, I think I see what you're getting at. It probably tells you you're too far to request a landing pad.

Fly withing 7.5k of the station and request a landing at that point, you should be given a landing pad at that point.

Thanks guys. It was definitely a bug though--each time I requested landing it would be granted but the tutorial voice told me I'd dropped out of supercruise too soon. Ended up restarting the tutorial and it worked fine :)
 
is there no PS4 review of the game even?
I'm guessing no reviewers had access until the server went live last night. At least I've not heard of any private server bring available for journalists on PS4.

The game is a fairly known quantity anyway, with the exception of controls, graphics and performance on PS4.
 

Bitsnark

Neo Member
I'm guessing no reviewers had access until the server went live last night. At least I've not heard of any private server bring available for journalists on PS4.

Yeah, this is pretty bang on.

We only just received our code earlier today with the understanding that we wouldn't have got it any earlier owing to the servers needing to be on.
 

Volimar

Member
Are you guys keeping up with this? Seems one of the Thargoid bases is active! You can go inside and place an Unknown Probe, an Unknown Artifact, and an Unknown Link (new item) in the correct spots to make this happen in the internal chamber!

lMT7gB0.jpg



HOLY SHITBALLS!!!
 

Reckheim

Member
Are you guys keeping up with this? Seems one of the Thargoid bases is active! You can go inside and place an Unknown Probe, an Unknown Artifact, and an Unknown Link (new item) in the correct spots to make this happen in the internal chamber!

lMT7gB0.jpg



HOLY SHITBALLS!!!

God damn, that's fucking kool.
 
Jeez this is fun!

This is like Eve Online spreadsheets but with wayyy more interactivity.

Love the screens in the cockpit being 'live' and stuff. The whole interface and HUD is very cool. Must be great in VR.

I think I'm going to buy Horizon right now actually.
 

WITHE1982

Member
Are you guys keeping up with this? Seems one of the Thargoid bases is active! You can go inside and place an Unknown Probe, an Unknown Artifact, and an Unknown Link (new item) in the correct spots to make this happen in the internal chamber!

lMT7gB0.jpg



HOLY SHITBALLS!!!

Whoa, whoa! Give us PS4 players a chance to catch up. I'm still learning how to launch without accidentally shooting stuff.

I fear by the time I'm up to speed the rest of the galaxy with be knee deep in Thargoid knowledge and artefacts.
 

WITHE1982

Member
Just got this game on ps4 and it's really good but is there a way to look around your ship without tilting the controller.

Press the corners of the DS4 touch pad to access the different screens. That's how I was doing it.

I'd like to disable sixaxis myself though.

Clicking the right-thumbstick works on XB1 and PC.

Yes that unlocks the camera to look around but you do so by tilting the controller. It's extremely awkward. I'd prefer just to use the right stick.
 
Top Bottom