July 29th 2014 saw the release of the Elite: Dangerous Standard Beta. While the Premium Beta had whet the appetites of many fans of David Braben’s epic space trading sim, this release was more of a full on starter of 55 playable systems as opposed to the amuse-bouche of the five presented previously. With the SB release came an influx of new players, and an influx of opinions that have courted some controversy on the Frontier Forums. More on that later. First I have to tell you what this old dog thinks about Standard Beta…

Full disclosure. I am a huge fan of the Elite Franchise. Massive, humungous, as large as a McDonalds munching Super-sized American Stereotype’s Ass of a fan. Apart from a “Grandstand Video Game Machine” and the odd space invaders box in a crumbling arcade on the North East of England’s coastline, Elite was my first real gaming experience. It appealed to my 6 year old imagination in a way that light sabre duels with sticks in the back garden could not. Here was a spaceship, in space, that I could fly (when my older brother would let me hold the joystick). The universe was my crustacean. So if I get all nerdy, geeky and gushy you’ll have to forgive me. My brain currently contains a 6 year old me who is jumping up and down hollering in excitement.

The core of Elite: Dangerous remains the same as it was back in 1984. You are a lone pilot, with your own vessel, schlepping through the galaxy trying to make a buck and defending yourself against those who want to take it from you. There are no skill points, no high scores, no extra lives. The only way to track your progression is through your Pilot’s Federation Rating, which ranges from Harmless to Elite, and the size of your bank balance. While there are in game missions, there is no overriding storyline, no laid out narrative. It’s just you, against the universe. Back in 1984 this was a revolution in gaming. Here in 2014, after years of FPS, MMORPG’s and sports games, these core principles feel fresh once again.

Your main experience in the game in it’s current form comes through the cockpit of your ship, and the eyes of your pilot. It’s a visceral and immersive enough experience on a monitor, but Frontier Developments have also added Head Tracking support and support for the Oculus Rift VR headset that sits you in that cockpit and let’s you experience the world in immersive 3D. Just for good measure they have also added support for 3D TV’s and even Anaglyph 3D for those of us who are willing to don a pair of cardboard glasses like Billy Zane in Back to the Future. However, these bits of technoporn are not mandatory for playing the game, they are simply there to enhance an already impressive experience.

Graphically the game is impressive. Beautifully rendered space stations of varying type and design are further enhanced by the subtle play of light and shadow from nearby spacial bodies. Those very bodies themselves are stunningly rendered and interact with each other on a cosmic level. Planets orbit stars, moons orbit planets, and in the current build there is even a contact binary star (two stars that orbit each other and actually come into coronal contact without absorbing each other’s mass, Where is Neil Degrasse Tyson when you need him?). These systems have all been modelled using Procedural Generation and a system created by Frontier called Stellar Forge which you can find out more about here.

Though why bother with such nerdy mathematics? Why not just make the systems by hand? Well the answer there is simple. Scale. Braben and co have modelled every star visible in the night sky so that we, the players, can go and visit them in our ships. PG has been used to created a model of the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the kicker is; this is all actual size. 1:1 scale. In a game this has only been done once before, in Frontier: Elite 2. With enhanced graphics this new model is a true representation of what David envisioned all the way back in 1993.

Above Isinona Plays Frontier: Elite 2

GETTING AROUND – FLIGHT MODES

Flying your ship is currently separated into three types of travel. Regular sub-light travel around combat zones, space stations or anywhere in a system you choose to go, it has that much freedom. Faster Than Light travel involves using your Frame Shift Drive system which catapults you around in systems at multiples of the speed of light, vastly shortening the time it takes to travel across systems that would take months or even years at sub-light speeds. But this is no cut scene, you maintain full control of your ship, navigating through the system, fighting with your throttle as planets and stars exert their gravitational forces against you. In this mode you can find your self pulled back into sub light mode by Interdiction, where you may be faced with Pirates after your precious load, or security forces who wish to scan you for warrants or contraband. Either way you may choose to submit, run or fight. It’s your decision.

The final flight mode is Hyperspace. You target a system in one of the menus or in the galactic star map, then punch a hole through space to travel the many light years it takes to get there. This is the only real cutscene moment in the game, but to me it feels like I’m travelling through the opening of an old Doctor Who episode. All I need is an overlay of Jon Pertwee’s face and it’s complete. Travelling through hyperspace drops you back into Frame Shift FTL mode at the other end, wherein you are once again in control of your ship. You can choose to head straight for a port, to a Nav Beacon, a planet, another star, a conflict zone or one of the many unidentified signal sources that pop up. Those may contain cargo floating in space, or an all out battle with pirates.

GREED IS GOOD – MARKETS AND TRADING

So back to the rest. Core gameplay involves trading. You buy commodities on the marketplace in one station and fly them to another to sell for profit. So far, so very 80’s. In the year 3300 capitalism is still going strong. By trading you increase your credit balance and, like any true yuppie, you invest it in a bigger ship with a bigger capacity and range so you can make EVEN MORE money. This trading is the backbone of the simulation. The ebb and flow of merchandise is the very life blood that keeps the galaxy going and you, the player, in nice shiny ships.

Each station has a marketplace and, based on the economic, financial status and political structure of that system, each market has it’s own supply and demand needs. An Extraction (see mining) system requires basics like food and drink for it’s inhabitants, along with industrial goods to help harvest the minerals that form the backbone of it’s economy. Those Industrial goods can be shipped from a system with an industrial economy, which in return requires the minerals mined from the extraction system as raw materials for those goods. The industrial system will need High Tech equipment for the manufacturing process, which come from a system with a High Tech focussed economy and so on. The market model is currently rather basic in that it is hard to unbalance a trade route by continued exploitation for maximum profit, and until Standard Beta 2 we will not see traders be able to destabilise the market with oversupply. That is coming though.

I CALL THEM “LASERS” – COMBAT ROLES

Elite: Dangerous is not simply trucks in space though. Your ship has hard points, mounts for the many and varied types of pew-pew weaponry that the year 3300 has to offer. This leads into the other styles of gameplay that are available to you in this vast sandbox. Mercenaries, Bounty Hunters and Pirates.

For those of us out there who prefer a more combat focussed game play i.e. screaming blue murder whilst blasting the face off another ship be it NPC or another human player, Elite also caters for you! For Mercenaries there are currently a number of conflict zones where you can jump in and join a stellar battle, you choose the faction you are going to fight for, and gets the monies for blasting your opponents out of the sky from the government you have chosen to support. Though the credits are not paid directly to your account, oh no. To add some risk to the rewards Frontier have instituted a voucher system. Every kill you make in a conflict zone gives you a voucher to be redeemed at a faction friendly spaceport, until you cash in those chips there is no money, and should you die before you make bank? That money is gone forever. So no staying in the zone with your ass on fire, gunning like a madman for “Just one more bounty” before your ship explodes. You have to know when to bug out and cash in. Get those repairs and fly back to the fray. You can make even more money if you combine your combat with missions available on the bulletin board in dock.

The voucher system has also been implemented for bounty hunters. As a BH you will currently spend most of your time hanging out around Navigation Beacons close to a system’s main star, laying in wait for a naughty pirate to leap in and attack one of the freighters slogging to their next stop with a precious cargo. A quick scan with your Kill Warrant Scanner will tell you how much this peg legged villain is worth before you blast them into space dust. Each blaggard destroyed means money in the bank and an overwhelming sense of righteousness. Most of the pirates you take out will be NPC’s, but sometimes you will be able to PvP with another human player, adding some variety to your battles.

Piracy is similar to bounty hunting, but you will have a cargo scanner and focus mostly on those fat, sweaty cargo ships that breath heavily when climbing the stairs. Once you determine their contents you can rub your hands together with glee, scream “Yarrrr!” and target their cargo hatch to bust them open like a Tiffany’s Piñata, then scoop up that glorious booty for sale at the nearest black market. But beware, do this in a zone covered by a Government and you will soon find yourself a target of Dog the Bounty Hunter and pals. So you’ll spend more time in Anarchy systems with other salty sea dogs. At present you can only pirate in specific places such as Nav Beacons or Outside the No Fire Zones of starports as currently the game does not have Interdiction modules which allow you to chase down ships in FTL travel and pull them out of Supercruise. However this is coming and will be part of the release version of the game.

BETA IS AS BETA DOES

This is the game as it stands in Standard Beta. There is plenty to do, plenty to try, and many bugs to find, get annoyed by and report (that’s why we are in the beta after all right? Right?). It is very easy to lose your ship to a kamikaze NPC then not be able to get it back again due to the insurance system bugging out, or you can lose your ship and your cargo simply by starting your game in station and being bugged onto a platform where another ship already exists. The result? BOOM, and no money left to replace it. Bugs like this are to be expected, and should be embraced. We’re here to find them and report them after all. Though by the topics that are frequently posted on the Frontier Forums it seems that many of the beta testers have forgotten that fact, cries of “OMG I lost hours of progress due to bug X! Frontier GIVE ME MY SHIP BACK” or more to that effect pepper the threads. Bug happen in Beta, that’s why we’re testing it. You lose your ship, your cargo and your credits, suck it up it’s all going to get reset anyway! Which allows me to segue nicely into…

CONTROVERSY!

Dum, dum, dum, DUUUUUUMMM. Oh yes, there is some. Though maybe not as much as I’m giving the impression of here, and perhaps yes I am being over-dramatic, but not a day goes by on the Elite: Dangerous forums where posters are not repeatedly posting about one particular topic-

PvP vs PvE. It is not unsurprising that this topic keeps appearing on the forums over and over again. In the 30 years since the original Elite games have evolved and developed in so many different ways, but with the advent of Multi-Player and the Internet PvP type gaming has become kind of a mainstay for that mode. We all enjoy it, of course we do. There is a great deal of fun and frustration to be had in MP with your friends or complete strangers. Racing, shooting, or even beating them with fists. Competitiveness and gaming go hand in hand. This is why we have E-Sports. It’s why single player sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto now has online multiplayer. A lot of gamers enjoy beating and blowing the crap out of each other, but there are still some who don’t. Some people would rather play WITH others rather than AGAINST them and this is where the schism of PvP vs PvE lays a new battle ground in the forums.

PvPers bemoan the lack of PvP battlegrounds, they don’t feel there is a challenge in fighting NPC’s. For some they feel the AI becomes predictable and thus the combat becomes boring. In some ways I can see their point, it is not without merit, however PvEers (is that even right? I don’t know, wordpress can underline it in red if it wants, I’m sticking with it) bring the argument against PvP citing Griefing (the killing and harassing other players over and over for shits and giggles) as something that would drive new players away. This argument too is not without merit. However these “discussions” on the forums have fallen into gross generalisations about each camp. PvPers being referred to as Griefers or frustrated EVE Online players who want to mould Elite into EVE 2: This Time There’s Cockpits!, and PvEers being labelled as CareBears (people who just want everyone to be nice and hold hands and not make others cry etc) who would rather hide in private groups or solo mode which the PvPers see as “easy mode”.

Those points of view are clearly bullshit. Not every PvPer is a griefer just like not every PvEer is a care bear. People want to play the game their own way, and with the grouping system and ignore lists Frontier is giving them just that. Personally I play this game in open play, where I can come into contact with other players, interact with them even if it’s just to say “hi” over text comms. I have yet to be griefed. No one has come out and attacked me, or harassed me in the game and to be honest the likelihood of it happening is very, very low. In a game that already has a large play area of 55 systems it is rare to have interaction with anyone other than an NPC, and when the play area expands on release to 100 Billion Systems with 400 Billion Stars, other players are going to be like hen’s fucking teeth.

In the end the arguments for and against PvP are moot. David Braben has said over and over that the game is not PvP focussed, the team is focussed on PwP in multiplayer, they want to encourage co-operation over confrontation. That is the direction the developers are taking Elite: Dangerous.

There is really no discussion to be had any further, Frontier are making the game that THEY want to play. We are just along for the ride. Love it or hate it, it’s all subjective.

Personally I like where the game is headed. I’ve strapped myself into my cockpit, I’m clutching my HOTAS tightly. I’ll go wherever Frontier decides to lead me.

“Assets borrowed from Elite: Dangerous, with permission of Frontier Developments plc”

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