Elite: Dangerous

[Teho]

I've had it for over a month, but haven't actually played around with it that much. I did try it out a little and I guess it takes a little getting used to a flight stick because I certainly wasn't flying better with it from the get go. A lot of the time I spent with it was tweaking the settings in Elite. Elite recognises it and has a basic setting for it but a lot of the buttons are unmapped so you'll definitely want to edit that a lot. That was in beta 1 though, beta 2 has rolled by and we're at beta 3 now. Could be a better standard setup now. I knew we were at the end of beta 1 when I started toying around with the stick and decided to wait till beta 2 to really get to grips with it. But then Wasteland 2 got its hooks into me before that, and I went on to Legend of Grimrock 2 after that which I'm still playing. So in the end I never even tried beta 2 at all. Will look at beta 3 after Grimrock, but I think I'll wait for the main release now before really getting into it. All progress will be reset then anyway.

I'm not disappointed with the flight stick in any way, I can say that much at least. The units themselves seem very sturdy. Doesn't feel like some cheap knockoff product. All the various analog inputs feel very precise, I didn't notice any lag or it going off calibration when recentering for example. There's a ton of inputs to map, more than you'd think by just looking at pictures. And if there aren't enough you can switch between three modes so you can have different setups for different situations. There's also a lot of settings to toy around with in the software, cosmetic as well as practical. There's anything from adjusting the deadzones and ranges of the various analog inputs to changing the colour of each little light individually.

I read a couple of reviews before I bought mine and all are praising it. Even though I haven't gotten that much experience with it myself I don't think you'll be disappointed. It's definitely the best stick in that price range. As you say you'd need to pay quite a bit more to get better ones, and they are only marginally so if the reviews are to be believed.

[Harrison]

I think the need to get used to dedicated controls is true for them all. When I decided to eventually purchase a force feedback racing wheel, instead of using a 360 controller, I got hold of a very good priced Logitech Driving Force GT and it is a great wheel/pedal setup but I am still getting used to it compared to a gamepad.. the force feedback alone takes some time to get to grips with, even being used to driving a real car.

I think I will definitely get one of these.. but I'm not in a big hurry as I'm waiting for the final cheaper production release of Elite, so will be keeping an eye on the second hand ones that appear to grab a bargain. It's what I did with the Logitech wheel and grabbed that for under £30.

[Teho]

Just announced, the official release will be on December 16th.

[Harrison]

Brilliant. I will finally order a copy before the release and save £15 over the beta cost.

[Harrison]

Online Only

What do you all think about this latest release detail?

The game will only be playable when connected online, even if you are playing the single player mode. You will not be able to play Elite offline.

I don't generally have an issue with this myself these days as I'm on a fast fibre connection, but when I used to be on ADSL which was sometimes quite slow or dropped out from time to time it was an issue for games requiring an online connection, and I expect many people are still in this situation. There was also the issue when I had to move a few times in the last couple of years, being left without any working internet for up to 2 weeks meaning I wouldn't have been able to play this game had it already been released.

Their reasoning is the size of the game universe and in game content.

[Teho]

Specifically, their reasoning was that an offline version would not feature the dynamically changing universe that the online game will because all of that happens server-side. It would be a static universe, just like in the old games.

But the old games worked. They were in fact really bloody successful. I don't see why they could not have released this. It's inferior to the online game, yes, but they did promise an offline option in their kickstarter after all. I don't see why they couldn't just have the option, maybe with a pop-up explaining what you're missing when you start an offline game?

It doesn't matter much for me either of course, but I don't agree with their reasoning.

[Harrison]

Exactly. Why not just include the default universe at the moment of launch for offline gameplay? One that doesn't evolve and dynamically change over time.

Any arguments of game file size would also be lame these days when you look at the ridiculous sizes some current game installs are becoming. Only recently the norm for a top PC game was somewhere between 8GB and 11GB for an install directory. Still pretty large, but nothing compared to new games. Looking at my recent currently installed games, Alien: Isolation is 23GB, Middle Earth is a very large 38GB, but I think the largest I currently have installed is Wolfenstein: The New Order, weighing in at 44.6GB! So they have no excuse for installed directory size at all.