More on Elite Dangerous Docking

Watching this makes me a little sad that I backed Star Citizen and not this game. In truth, I thought this was the boy who cried elite again after giving up on Elite 4 over a decade ago.

But this game is Elite and is so much more impressive than Star Citizen. I am watching for the beta, and will properly back the game at that stage.

What I really like about Elite is they aren't whoring the game out for ships. Instead actually getting down and building the game. You pay a premium to access the alpha ( nearly $400 NZD ) and beta access doesn't include DLC.

This is how you build your game. My fear with Starcitizen is all theses ships which they are selling is going to ruin the game when it comes out. Because one of two things will happen.

1) Paid for ships will be overpowered creating a pay to win model
2) Paid for ships will be nerfed causing whine from those who threw money at Star Citizen every time they posted a new ship.

All we get from Starcitizen in the way of videos is pointless wastes of time that hardly ever show anything from the game. This can't be cheap to do and seems like a utter waste of funds.

Anyway enough of Starcitizen, this is a post about Elite.

Docking looks fantastic, the station is great, the UI looks like its been taken from the original, I recognise all the readouts and instantly understand whats going on. The depth of thought put into design is also great. This is no Mass effect lets make something cool, this is instead lets make something realistic. The Babylon 5 design mantra. If they pull off walking on stations / walking on ships / walking on planets, I think I will never need another game ever.

Not having the game is making things even more exciting. Its like when I first read about Frontier First Encounters ( Elite 3 ), it drove me insane and bugs aside was a fantastic game. And the first time I took off from a planet and flew around it was one of the best gaming experiences of all time.

Planets in Elite are part of the DLC so won't be in at launch. Hopefully they don't get shelved as they are needed to breakup space travel.