A heads up for anyone else who died a few times in the tutorial, there's a bit of info they only covered in the out-of-game video tutorials. The tutorial enemies were flying circles around me, and I couldn't figure out why. Based on Freeelancer and similar games I was dropping my throttle almost to zero, so I could pivot faster. When I realized that wasn't working, I tried leaving the throttle on full, which worked exactly as well.
No, there's an "ideal thrust level" indicated by a blue smear on the throttle bar, which makes the arduously slow turn rate almost on-par with the tutorial enemies.
Ehh... Really not impressed so far, maybe I'll try again tomorrow. I also rolled my eyes when the registration insisted on me entering my real life name. When there's someone who obsessively adores this game, who I don't want to talk to... Nothing for it, now they know that I am Pul Wat Aa.
I know there's a lot of depth to the game, in the sense of grinding long journeys Freelancer-style, but the default with a mouse feels really frustrating. I have a joystick *somewhere*, which might help.
I may be biased against it.
Bought the game recently, and was similarly bamboozled by the tutorial combat as you and I guess everyone else.
Turns out, the key to dogfighting is using linear (directional) thrusters rather than relying on your main engine. The thrusters are mighty, and get mightier when you hit the booster. The tutorial (or their own tutorial videos) doesn't really tell you any of this, though. But there's plenty user-made videos about using thrusters in combat. I watched a couple of those (
example), and they kinda made sufficient sense of the whole thing for me not to worry about combat too much and just jump into the game proper.
Oh, and rebind your roll axis to something else than mouse.
The bindings that work for me are similar to those somebody suggested in the thread for the game we have here.
WS, AD, RF for up-down, left-right, forward-back linear thrust. QE for roll. Mouse to pitch and yaw, and mouse wheel to main thrust.
I had....very mixed feelings about Elite Dangerous, as I think most people do. I think many years ago I would have been madly in love with it, but now it feels like it's way too much grind for nothing. It's not like Path of Exile style grinding where it's a massive task but you're still moving forward, I felt like with Elite I was just sort of spending time on it for no reason? if that makes sense. It's not that I don't have the time for it, it's just that I don't know if I want my gaming time to be spent just waiting for stuff to happen.
To distil down my issue with it - it just doesn't value my time. I hate that phrase normally, as it always feels like people are saying that as everything wasn't delivered to them on a plate that the game was wasting their time, but I really don't mean it like that. I just mean that it takes forever to do anything and when you do whatever that 'thing' is there isn't much payoff.
I'm getting used to it slowly, but so far it looks like exactly the same experience as the old Frontier (Elite) games, only with the benefits of modern technology and a lot more extra content. But at the heart of it, its the same 'game' that is almost entirely about the experience of being a space pilot and less about the gamey bits.
It's like those trucker simulators, only in space. There's enough realistically modelled moving parts in the game, from reading the map to the landing procedure, that you can derive certain satisfaction from mastering them all and just getting from point A to point B.
Whether that one's thing or not is a matter of personal taste.
But I do have to say I feel spoiled by the recent instant-gratification gaming trends (or it's just an age thing), and this one is definitely a throwback to the 90s.
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