This is £4.99 now on Steam for all you VR adopters. Horizons is also £4.99.

This looks very cool. Surprised at no VR on release - how does that integrate with the rest of the game in VR?

The Odyssey update drops tomorrow. I love this game. I love the developing method that has a roadmap of years years as it gradually builds on what went before. It's such a sensible way of making a galaxy-sized game.



The new stations look cool.

They're doing it after release and the Odyssey expansion won't actually have VR enabled at first.

It'll be interesting to see if you can meet other players in the spaceports and start chatting to strangers. This 'update' looks a doozy.

It's worth bearing in mind this is an alpha and has its own roadmap. They haven't done this before for an update and suggests it's a huge expansion if they're doing so much testing.

Well Elite would appear to have actual gameplay.

ED is a huge timesink and the game hates you, but it has got more noob friendly over the years. The initial tutorials are better now but you're still going to have to watch a few TY vids and probably go on the forums at some point. It can be completely captivating and the community is great. You'll meet some lovely people who will go out of their way to lend a hand to a new commander and there are those that prey on noobs.

Now you don't actually have to play in open world mode but I suggest you do. You start in an area off limit to experienced players just so you don't get blown to bits in the opening few minutes. Combat is a small part of ED and early on you won't have valuable cargo but some people will blow you up just to watch you burn. You will have to learn a shit tonne of stuff just to get started but people who get into it get really into it. It's a vast game and people organise expeditions through forums to go to remote parts of the galaxy. 



I think somewhere like 5% of the galaxy has been discovered. You can choose to mine, do cargo runs, be a pirate or bounty hunt. You can even choose to just go round exploring. 

It's difficult at this point to see how the new update is going to alter things but it's probably going to be significant. The base game didn't even let you land on planets and this turns huge chunks of the game into a fps. It's the most PC game in PC land mind. It can be exhausting and at times boring, to the point you can buy a youtube thing for your ship for those long journeys through space. 



You can also buy voicepacks made through 3rd parties to control major parts of the ship and it is extremely immersive. Pretty much essential for VR.



There's even a (paid?) service that will help you if you run out of fuel in a remote area and need rescued.

https://fuelrats.com/

It's that kind of game and I love it. In VR it can be jaw dropping. It's an extremely beautiful game in many respects.



It can be a hell of a commitment though. As you can probably tell I think it's wonderful but you get out what you put in.

Aw this is sweet.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/elite-dangerous-in-game-memorial-name-requests.566261/

Trade slaves and drugs?

Paul the sparky wrote:

g.man wrote:

Well Elite would appear to have actual gameplay.

What do you actually do in Elite that you can't actually do in NMS?

Ive played a bit of both and for me its scale. NMS doesnt do the scale of the planets or space very well (its improved though). Whereas Elite you really feel how tiny you are. Jump to a new system and you can spend like 15 minutes just travelling to the nearest orbiting station. The sense of scale is mind boggling.

Yeah the lack of handholding makes the game feel even bigger. I say it's more noob friendly and it is - you can now use autodocking at spacestations although it's miles faster when you get good at manual, but it's still pretty lame. It's pretty scandalous it doesn't even mention fuel scoops, it just dumps you in the galaxy and says ""Do what you want". Probs the biggest difference is NMS isn't an MMO. ED is making the presence of other players increasingly felt.

Yeah I went in as a noob via GamePass a few weeks ago, managed to get to grips with it and do a few courier missions. Daunting, but enjoyable.

I'm guessing you're all PC players for ED?

I was thinking of getting odyssey, but can't face the idea of more grind for all of the engineering upgrade materials. The new gameplay additions will probably tempt me back, though.

I dropped back in the other week - rescuing people from one of the burning space stations after the attacks. Got my Imperial rank up a bit more, but even if unlock the cutter, I doubt I'd be able to afford it and outfit it properly. I'm happy with my Python/ Krait/ Clipper fleet, though.

The base game + previous expansions is 20GB on PC and the update is 60. That's quite an expansion.