Frontier Developments' Elite: Dangerous is the 4th iteration of the Elite series, dating back to the original 1984 wire-mesh space-flight simulator. It has gone through many iterations over the years but when Dangerous launched in 2014 after a successful crowdfunding campaign, it made a major leap forward in terms of both complexity and realism. It is one of my all-time favorite games and at the time of writing sits at the top of my most played Steam Games list with 1107 hours invested in it. All this time playing and participating in the community, because Elite: Dangerous is just as much a community as it is a game, and I see a lot of people come through that have no idea what Elite is, what they should expect from it, or who came in and hated it because they thought it would be completely different. I already made a buyer's guide for Elite on Steam, which now sits at a prestigious 5-stars, but that was back in June of 2015. Elite has changed quite a bit over the months, and so I'd like to provide an updated, and more in-depth guide to answer a lot of the questions people ask to hopefully help them decide on whether or not they want to pick it up.
So what exactly IS Elite: Dangerous?
Elite: Dangerous is an online first-person space simulator pseudo-sandbox. You take on the role of a freelance pilot in charge of their own star ship in the early 34th century. The premise is that you are simply one of billions of other pilots in the galaxy trying to make a living in whatever manner you choose and there are no end-game goals beyond what you set for yourself. While the game is entirely online, you can choose to play in the free-for-all Open Play mode, a Private Group for just you and your friends, or in Solo Play. Regardless of which mode you choose, all players share the same persistent universe,
What is there to do in Elite?
The open-ended nature of the game allows players to do whatever activities they feel like given their ships are properly equipped. You can be a trader, pirate, bounty hunter, soldier, espionage agent, smuggler, explorer, limo driver and much more, and if you want to go beyond the scope of the game and engage in community-run activities, you can be a racer, rescue operative, researcher, body guard and other things. Ultimately, you will need credits to outfit yourself to do everything, and as a result your first couple dozen hours should be spent figuring out a comfortable way to make a profit, buy a better ship and outfit it to fit your play style. There are tons of different missions in the game that you can take on from the bulletin board on any station to help you get started, and even make serious money once you've proven yourself capable of more dangerous and high-paying assignments. Once you've figured out a comfortable rhythm and make a small fortune to lean back on, you can essentially do whatever you want.
How realistic is the simulation?
There are over 400 Billion star systems in Elite, making up a detailed replica of the Milky Way galaxy, using actual star charts and astronomical data to recreate things as accurately as possible. Everything is rendered in 1:1 scale, celestial bodies rotate, orbit, change atmospheric patterns and more all in real-time. Planets generate their terrain based on a number of factors such as distance from parent star, number of moons, distance from a gas giant, material composition, size, density, rotation and orbit speed, and much more. Not only that, but inhabited systems also have a background simulation that runs the various socioeconomic and political states depending on a number of factors including economic boon/depression, high pirate activity, heavy trade income, major faction activities, war and civil war, famine, plagues, and more. Player activities can also influence these states depending on what's going on.
See my Elite page for Time-Lapse videos that show off the simulation of celestial objects, as well as other content.
How complicated is Elite?
Elite has a reputation for being very unforgiving to new players as there is a LOT of information to take in and make sense of, see the HUD in the accompanied image. All of that information must be monitored by the player regularly, up to constantly during combat. Information/contacts, radar, ship hull status and shield levels, thermal signature, throttle levels, internal heat buildup, target, target distance/orientation, module status and charge levels, mass lock, power diversion, capacitor charges, fuel levels, and more. There are also side panels for navigation, detailed target analysis, and situational awareness, as well as one that describes detailed readouts of the status of every ship component, the players profile and statistics, relations with various factions, and advance ship functions such as silent running, IFF, system reboot, and even self destruct. That's just the HUD, flight mechanics can be tricky (and trust me on this, if you use M+KB as your control scheme, swap Yaw and Roll bindings) and there are a lot of advanced maneuvers that take a lot of practice to master and utilize in combat, and the actual mechanics of the game require attention as well, especially if you want to be a successful trader. There are training missions and videos provided with the game, but they are bare bones and focus exclusively on basics. Luckily, there are plenty of tutorials from other people as well as player-made tools and websites to help you understand the game better and plan ahead. This is NOT a game for people who just want to pick it up and play, you can get to that point but it requires a lot of invested time learning the game and how to succeed before you are able to just drop in for an hour here or there.
What sort of player interaction is there?
Elite has little in the way of social tools comparable to other MMO's, but it does contain a friend system, private and local text chat, a grouping function with built-in voice communication, and PvP combat. There are regular community goals which all players can participate in and contribute to the goal, usually by turning in bounties or selling certain commodities, and at the end everybody gets a reward based on their participation level. If you look outside of the game, you can find many player-run groups that organize events and activities. The community for Elite is huge, so while the actual game might be lacking in the tools department, that seems to only have made player groups even more tight-knit.
How big is the player base?
Elite: Dangerous has both a steam and non-steam version, and so SteamCharts can not accurately describe the full playerbase, but the player count usually peaks at 7-10 thousand players on steam, with many more non-steam players also in the mix. It's safe to say, however, that there are several hundred thousand active and semi-active players in total.
You mentioned PvP?
In Open Play, it's a free-for-all PvP environment. Every player can attack any other player for any reason, although it doesn't happen as often as you'd think. Space is big, and so players bumping in to each other randomly is rare, and it's even more rare that a player would be hostile. Usually people just say hi, using the "o7" salute emoticon in chat or ignore each other. Chat only really happens during down time in stations or at one of the many player-magnet landmarks that can be found around the game. If you are interested in being a dedicated PvPer, you can always be a pirate and attack players illegally, or you can be the reverse and be a bounty hunter that patrols the starting zones or community goals and kills griefers who attack newbies or participants respectively. There is a meta that one will have to learn to adapt to in order to REALLY succeed at PvP, as player-ready ships are a lot different than NPC-ready ships, but generally a solid combat vessel and a skilled player can take on most threats, player or otherwise.
 |
Here is a faction territory map that encompasses several
thousand star systems and where the majority of the player
base calls home...
...and here is that same bubble zoomed all the way out to the
point that you can't even really see it anymore. |
A game this big must have lots to see.
Absolutely, in fact in the 2 years Elite has been out, less than 0.1% of the galaxy has actually been explored by players. There is a HUGE amount of territory for players to uncover, and the "bubble" of human-inhabited space that 90% of players are located takes up less than a 1000 light-year expanse. Travel to get to the far end of the galaxy can take days, and if you want to stop and gather scan data to sell to cartographers back home, it can take weeks, and if you don't have a proper exploration ship, that can increase to months. Every single system is unique in its own way, and while it may get old seeing the same stars and rocks all the time, there are many nebulae and vantage points throughout the galaxy that the visuals for alone can make the long trips out worth it. When a player is the first to sell the scan data for an object, that object forever gets that player's name attached to the object with the "Discovered By" tag, and will receive a significant bonus to the payout. Exploration is one of my favorite activities in this game and you can visit
my Elite page to see my Steam Screenshot feed for Elite which is filled with images from my travels. Many of the objects that you'd know in real life are also present in the game since the galaxy was generated using actual astronomical data, and as more information about these objects and systems are made known, the devs change things to match how they appear in real life.
So what happens if I die in the game?
Unlike in certain atrociously-written anime series, dying in the game will not kill you in real life, although depending on expensive the death was it might make you wish it did. When your ship is destroyed, it takes you to the dreaded Rebuy Screen, which gives you multiple options: The first and most common is to just rebuy your ship with all of it's modules at 5% total value as your insurance covers 95% of the cost. If you have to, you can choose not to rebuy certain modules to be able to cover the cost. You can also choose to take out a loan which will scale depending on your rank, which will then take out 10% of all of your earnings until paid off. If you have no other option, you can choose to declare bankruptcy and restart in one of the starting systems with the starting ship and 1000 credits. A good tip is to never fly what you can't afford to rebuy several times over. If you don't have the 5% rebuy cost in your balance several times, then don't fly the ship, or be very VERY cautious.
Is there a story line to follow?
Yes, but it happens in the background regardless of whether or not you participate. Every ship has access to "Galnet News" which regularly uploads articles that describe the various happenings around the galaxy and as events unfold, the game changes. Sometimes player actions will cause events that Galnet will report on and the devs will make changes to the simulation accordingly, other times Galnet will report on something that will drive players in to a frenzy and rushing to see some new discovery or assist some new faction. There are many political figures, factions, corporations, and prominent individuals who influence human civilization in the 34th century and if you actually pay attention to what's going on, the Lore hidden within Elite can be extremely entertaining and fun to participate in, but if you don't actively look for it, you might not even know what's going on.
What is planned for the future of Elite?
Currently, we have space and the flight model, as well as the ability to land on airless planets and moons and drive around in a buggy, but eventually we will be able to land on atmospheric planets as well as get out of our ships and walk around in station interiors, engage in FPS combat, perform EVA maneuvers, and more. Elite has just started its 3rd year, and there are 10 total years of content updates planned at the very least. Updates come slowly, every few months or so, but each one adds in a bunch of changes and major gameplay elements that expand on the foundation. The game is released in seasons, with each one being a paid expansion that ads in more content while also bringing free updates to the base game, with the owners of previous expansions getting a significant discount. In the event that the Elite servers will have to be shut down, The developers have said they intent to take a snapshot of the persistent universe and then release that to the public for free so players can host their own servers and make sure the game never dies for as long as there are people that want to play it.
Are there microtransactions to buy ships and modules?
No. You can go on to the Frontier store and purchase cosmetics for your ships such as paintjobs, bobbleheads, and weapon colors, but nothing that alters gameplay will ever be sold for real money aside from the expansions.
What are some criticisms to be had about Elite?
The two biggest criticisms people have for Elite are the fact that it's so huge that it feels shallow, "a mile wide and an inch deep", and the other is that the game is extremely grindy, in that you do the same thing over and over again for no real reward at the end. I disagree with both of those, but it's all a matter of perspective. I think Elite is one of the deepest games I've ever played, but that's because I really dig in to the meat of things, and everything I do in the game I do because I actually want to be doing it, so I never feel like I'm grinding. Other issues people have are that the game is realistic to the point of it being tedious, one such example being the 1:1 scale and lack of fast travel. You can hyperspace jump between stars with a max distance per jump based on your Frameshift Drive quality and ship mass, but once you're in systems, there's a general acceleration/deceleration with in-system FTL that is fixed and can not be sped up. So if you need to travel to a station in a binary system, and the station is orbiting a planet orbiting the star 300,000 light-seconds from the one you dropped out of hyperspace at, then you better prepare for a 20-minute flight. To people like me, this makes the game feel realistic and gives a sense of charm, but to other people they don't like the idea of spending 20 minutes looking at black speed by and a little glowing dot get bigger and bigger for that entire time. If you're like me and are capable of investing time in to something simply because you enjoy it, and prefer realism in a Space Sim over convenience, then Elite's biggest "flaws" shouldn't bother you too much, but if that sounds like something you wouldn't enjoy then go look somewhere else for a space game, because Elite won't be that fun for you.
And that's about it! Elite: Dangerous really is, however, a game that you have to see to be believed. So I'd recommend seeing some of my videos on the game as well as browsing youtube for more information.
ObsidianAnt is one of my favorite youtubers to watch on the subject of Elite: Dangerous and I'd suggest checking him out if you still aren't sure.
If you have decided that you want to purchase Elite,
you can do so from Steam using this link.
Thanks for reading! o7
