Elite Dangerous

[Aya Reiko]

I would agree ED suffered a worrying decline this year particularly over the spring & summer, but I think overall, it's still surviving on average. On the steamcharts , ED is still relatively on par or higher than other major players in the genre. Today it's back up to 75 on the top games back above NoMan'sSky at 87. There was so much vitriol on yt comments on ED related channels blaming the devs or dissing the game up to just before the 3.3 beta previews and now it's finally back to calm and even hopeful positivity (whew).

I think the new 3.3 features and updates are great and a big boost to the game. Nice to see Frontier is prioritizing ED dev again this year and supposedly a new phase of better things to come post-Beyond. It's also reported the staff numbers are up to 100 for ED development. In general, ED's ongoing successful development and X4 coming out soon just further shows how much of a ponzi mess and obsolete CIG & SC are now.

Bear in mind players can bypass Steam entirely via the game's own launcher (which is recommended if they play in VR).

[krylite]

It looks like someones at Frontier did a "car-ad" looking trailer of the upcoming Mamba which also trolls CIG's SC ship ads. 
 
(serves them right with CIG often aping, pacing, or pre-empting FDev's update numbering release scheduling labeling: 3.1,3.2,3.3 etc., and among other things)

Plenty got the irony in the yt comments (lol). Where ED's ships do get implemented within a month or so after their trailers; for the Mamba (free with Horizons as usual) next week!

Bear in mind players can bypass Steam entirely via the game's own launcher (which is recommended if they play in VR).

Absolutely. I can choose to use either steam or Frontier launcher. I referred to steamcharts because I think it's still a decent sample set, at least for the purpose of relative comparison between the space genre games.

[jwh1701]

It looks like someones at Frontier did a "car-ad" looking trailer of the upcoming Mamba which also trolls CIG's SC ship ads. 

That was really well done and the comments where great.

[dsmart]

Yeah, that was some epic trolling :emote-lol:

[jwh1701]

Provide feedback after the update, wondering if anyone else is gotten in?

Got a little distracted but estimating the update will take 35-40 minutes.

I had no idea SC backers even played ED let alone were requesting commodities, unless
the get a little nicer no help from me.

[jwh1701]

No server connections at the moment.

[dsmart]

Yeah, servers being hammered. So much for the cloud 

[jwh1701]

I'm in few screenshots but the mission board and passenger board keeps timing out.

[jwh1701]

If you had the gamma up before it will definitely need to be toned down.
FOV was reset for me, keybindings were good.



Not sure why it was so dark.



Only got one jump in before I got several of these and I'm going to wait.

[jwh1701]

If the missions go as they are now I can only play about 45 mins to an hour before they are exhausted. I did not see the increase payouts and all missions above 3m CR were no where to be seen. I really hope they go back on the response they are not increasing missions come around on refresh times and add more.

[krylite]

Wasn't that a fun ad? Some article reported that the FDev designers based it off a ferrari as a starting point.

re: 3.3 and the new lighting. Kind of a mixed bag where I like the positives a lot and it doesn't look as glaring on a subdued lcd screen with higher resolution. However, as mentioned in general the extra effect lighting on the background stars and dust I'd agree is overdone and bordering on "cartoonish" coloring, but of course not at the level of NMS or earlier X-games.

re: board flipping. I guess in my case I don't really miss it as I tried it only a few times. I did get around to an extra billion or so at Robigo (and there are other lucrative routes I surely missed), but I bored quick of flipping and just waited for the board to change while I was doing other things; I often play ED in a window while split attention on something else. I've had fun doing missions and cargo runs, and also a year of heavy powerplay hauling and undermining. Now I guess I'm back to bgs missions in alignment with my power interests. Perhaps someday ED will offer ownership for player cmdrs of a structure or base since so many popped up with 3.3 now, maybe for sale for a few billion for those who made several.

Overall I think the game is in a better place than ever and it sounds like development efforts have ramped up with larger teams. Looking forward to seeing the future of ED for it's next five years.

[jwh1701]

Wasn't that a fun ad? Some article reported that the FDev designers based it off a ferrari as a starting point.

re: 3.3 and the new lighting. Kind of a mixed bag where I like the positives a lot and it doesn't look as glaring on a subdued lcd screen with higher resolution. However, as mentioned in general the extra effect lighting on the background stars and dust I'd agree is overdone and bordering on "cartoonish" coloring, but of course not at the level of NMS or earlier X-games.

re: board flipping. I guess in my case I don't really miss it as I tried it only a few times. I did get around to an extra billion or so at Robigo (and there are other lucrative routes I surely missed), but I bored quick of flipping and just waited for the board to change while I was doing other things; I often play ED in a window while split attention on something else. I've had fun doing missions and cargo runs, and also a year of heavy powerplay hauling and undermining. Now I guess I'm back to bgs missions in alignment with my power interests. Perhaps someday ED will offer ownership for player cmdrs of a structure or base since so many popped up with 3.3 now, maybe for sale for a few billion for those who made several.

Overall I think the game is in a better place than ever and it sounds like development efforts have ramped up with larger teams. Looking forward to seeing the future of ED for it's next five years.

I turned the gamma down a bit and reduced the UI brightest also but I do find the letters are a little blurry on the left side. But overall it looks better. I have add the sun light popping on and off when I'm pulling away from a star on the ship a few times. Even after all these years I do not get bored of running cargo and passengers for hours but I cannot do that now. I'm hoping that 3.3 is great for others and we see more content in 4.0. I really wanted to hit 15b in cr and 50 of every mat data and manufactured type before 3.3. I'm really close on mats but came up short on the cr. I'm thinking of buying a second cutter to try out the mining changes as some have reported that mining is much more enjoyable. I saw another post that the new scanning has greatly increased mat collection, before it was so hit or miss I could not take it.

[krylite]

Just in case anyone may be interested..

"Distant Worlds 2" on Elite: Dangerous is starting in less than two days. There is still time to sign up on the now 9500+ participating cmdr roster. (now 10,800)

It's a coordinated group exploration effort of the galaxy which will last most of the year. Basically there are stages and waypoints where ship commanders are generally expected to follow in step while individually exploring and navigating among the 400 billion stars still mostly unexplored along the general planned path.

Participation can be done in solo or private group as well, so there is no need to follow concurrently visually or in time. All one has to do is sign up on their list on a form on their website and then participate as much or little as you like.

Main website: https://www.distantworlds2.space/
Main thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/452358-Distant-Worlds-2-A-Journey-of-Discovery
Roster link (& signup link): https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/404790
General wikia information summary: http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Distant_Worlds_II



Livestreams and launch times: (Today, 1-13-19/"3305")

"
Europe:

    Livestream begins at 19:00 UTC here : (https://gaming.youtube.com/c/DrKaii/live)
    Hosted by CMDR Dr. Kaii
    Fleet Launch from Pallaeni DW3302 Tourist Beacon at 20:00 UTC

Americas:

    Livestream begins at UTC 00:00 UTC (Mon) here : (https://www.twitch.tv/sepp_eleu)
    Hosted by CMDR Kancro Vantas
    Fleet Launch from Pallaeni DW3302 Tourist Beacon at 01:00 UTC (5 hours after the Euro Launch)

Oceania:

    Livestream begins at UTC 09:00 UTC (Mon) here : (https://www.twitch.tv/lassombragames)
    Hosted by CMDR Drebin Omega
    Fleet Launch from Pallaeni DW3302 Tourist Beacon at 10:00 UTC (14 hours after the Euro Launch)


Additional Livestream Index Page :  (https://www.distantworlds2.space/livestreamers)
"
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/452358-Distant-Worlds-2-A-Journey-of-Discovery


o7

[dsmart]

Just in case anyone may be interested..

I was planning on taking part, though I don't think my schedule will permit it. :(

[Beexoffel]

I was planning on taking part, though I don't think my schedule will permit it. :(

Jump ranges have increased in the past two years. I gather it'll be about 80 hours there and back, spread over five months. More months if you take it easy on the way back.