I would like to introduce myself. I am Danish and male. I played the original Elite in 1984 (still have the box I believe) on C64, and for a long time in my gaming life Elite was my benchmark for the great gaming experience. As far as I remember, I did make ELITE - but much too late to win the prize for the first one who did.
I have recently begun playing ED Horizons, and felt a real rush approaching a Coriolis station again. I am very impressed with what Frontier has achieved here, the detail across scale is astonishing and so well done, stylish! - ED's potential has to be huge, surely.I want to say this. I come from over 8 years of a continuous solid presence with several accounts in EVE Online where I have done everything - PVP, PVE, trading, manufacturing and so on. Fun thing is that EVE started out as the next best thing to me, in lack of what ED has turned out to be. EVE is beautiful and great in many ways, but I unsub'ed some while back because the game has degenerated. The sandbox has turned theme park with CCP becoming greedy, imposing certain play modes to grow their number of subscribers. Role playing is being publicly pooh-pooh'ed by EVE's own devs and metagaming (including pseudo role playing griefers, ironically) is the dominating force in EVE right now. Not fun wanting to delve into and taking the EVE universe "seriously" (PVP is very much a part of that) and then having people flying around with names like "Calm Down Freighter" or "Hold my beer" (ganker accounts) and various profane ship names. It breaks the immersion that I want and expect from a game that scale and price. It is mockery of the whole epic setting provided and making it rather pointless.
When I play games I role play. That's the whole point! I am not speaking in made-up space languages or wearing costume, but I AM in space and I AM the commander of a huge, mean spaceship roaming the galaxy. I am a grown up, and I like to play, that in the future, the world might be like this. My real life is full of real people, real decisions, and all sorts of real world experiences related to my work and people around me. So I game to imagine. I actually think this goes for most people - especially in the science fiction genre games. But despite the elaborate EVE lore and storyline, CCP endorse metagaming instead - in which causing real "delicious tears" (it is so ridiculous) is a valid gaming objective. I think CCP is making a big mistake, the number of active players peaked years ago, and the game suffers from poor retention of players. No wonder. I pulled what amounts to around 540 EUR off of CCP's yearly income because I wont have my play style ridiculed to the tune of that much of my own money.
Now, I have seen ppl on ED forums asking for an EVE like graded security model in space, but I would recommend against it. It is not working, and would specifically not be working in ED where the cost of losing a ship in suicide ops is very small compared to EVE. The so called hi-sec in EVE is marred by the delicious tears demographic, many of whom are probably the very same causing ED players to come to MOBIUS. The belief is very strong amongst those players that griefing is some sort of birth right. And in the case of EVE, CCP condones it. EVE today is very much designed for a specific, large player grouping (around 20000 toons) who's mantra for many years was "we are here to destroy your game".
I hope Frontier is clever enough to keep ED a true sandbox and to keep the griefers in check in a pretty firm manner.
So with this small rant, I had to get it off my chest (please forgive my clumsy English), it is great to be back in the now very impressive Elite universe! I hope to hook up with others in game along the way. I really regret missing the Distant Worlds expedition - would have loved being part of that!
Right now I am actually grinding a bit for credits and my Anaconda. And then I am going nomad.
Which leaves: Where are the Thargoids?
