[kruczek]

That's an interesting example, because I never felt the need for 3rd party tools while playing Elite Dangerous. I did some upgrades to my ship, mainly based on what I found in store of stations I visited. I did a bit of mining and was able to sell it for some profit.

I'm sure I would be more efficient, if I'd use 3rd party tools, but it still didn't prevent me from actually playing and enjoying the game. I'd say it's much different to the "terraria problem" mentioned in the post.

[jrootabega]

I think this is a game that demonstrates especially well how online gaming discourse goes wrong. I believe that this game and Frontier have always deserved harsh criticism all throughout the past 10 years, but that criticism needs to be fair.

Online gaming discourse favors instant gratification, min/maxing, low thought, and low complexity. Reddit, forums, and youtube create feedback/echo chambers that give the impression that there is only one correct way to play a game. Tribal thinking reinforces those bad viewpoints and drowns out, or even punishes, anyone who questions it. People participate in these patterns to feed their own ego more than explore the game. And a lot of people don't know any better; they're told that this is the best way to play, and they believe it and spread that misinformation, getting tribal approval and warm fuzzies for "helping" newbies.

In most cases, Elite now has enough in-game information to let you become broadly knowledgeable and competent, but you have to pay attention, think, experiment, record, persist, and be patient. The high skill ceiling does not just apply to flying, but to understanding the world itself, and it can take a long time to approach it. Most things will take days to get comfortable with, and some things weeks or months! Its philosophy is at odds with reddit and youtube thinking, where the loudest signals you'll receive by far are how to min/max, how to obtain as much as possible as fast as possible, and what the "correct" ways of thinking about the game are.

And certain aspects of the game were meant to be discoverable by the playerbase as a whole, rather than every individual player. Finding barnacles, Thargoids, and Guardian artifacts originally happened because someone in the large number of players searching for them just got lucky. It's frustrating that any given player has an infinitesimal chance of finding that kind of stuff, but that's the price of making something so rare that the news of its discovery can excite the whole playerbase.

[bilekas]

I agree with you here, and I should add to my original post that I do love the game for all that it is.

> That's the price of making something so rare that the news of its discovery can excite the whole playerbase.

This is completely true, but its also extremely annoying to me, because when I send the game to friends who I know would love it if they get over the learning curve just seem to bounce off it because they think "is this all there is". And it's a very hard game to explain.

With this in mind, its very easy to see Frontier not getting the playerbase that they deserve and so it being an online only game, will be eventually shut down sooner than it should be. Its really unfortunate.

I have had success with 1 friend and we've sinked well over 300 hours together which co-op play in itself changes the game up so much.

For me it's the exploration side, I love spending a week or so going out to colonia and having that true 'lost in space' feeling.