Is currently a good time to play ED?

[Alec White]

Is currently a good time to play ED? Are there a good amount of players?
What about Odyssey? Worth buying?

[Aegix Drakan]

Any time's a good time, I guess. You'll spend most of your time on your own, so the number of players doesn't really matter, unless you're in a community goal system.

Skip Odyssey, honestly, unless walking on planets is super important to you. ED is best as a space game.

[Illtempered]

This game would be so epic if it just had more warm bodies...

[Tay-uk]

Don't skip Odyssey, that's just crazy talk :) Yes ED is a great space flight sim game primarily and its best part is the flying and in reality you don't need Odyssey, but due to to nature of the game and the fact you can be so far away from anything happening it's always best to have options and I think Odyssey gives you that little bit extra in my opinion. You can never achieve a first footfall without Odyssey, and when you thousands of light years from the bubble, its nice every now and again to get out of your ship and stretch your legs. Either way it's always a good time to play :)

[funkynutz]

Originally posted by Illtempered:

This game would be so epic if it just had more warm bodies...

Head over to HIP 20567. Plenty of warm bodies there.

[Lupinus Rictus]

Yes and yes

[Talby]

Originally posted by Aegix Drakan:

Any time's a good time, I guess. You'll spend most of your time on your own, so the number of players doesn't really matter, unless you're in a community goal system.

Skip Odyssey, honestly, unless walking on planets is super important to you. ED is best as a space game.

I have had some in-ship missions I could not complete since they required landing on ody-only planets, not sure if that issue was addressed or not, it has been nearly a year since I did not have ODY...

EDIT - just today I took a passenger mission and landed on a thin-atmosphere planet, and have to say is worth having ODY just for the thin-atmo views IMHO

[Nobody]

Originally posted by Alec White:

Is currently a good time to play ED? Are there a good amount of players?
What about Odyssey? Worth buying?

It's always a good time to play ED.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Originally posted by Alec White:

Is currently a good time to play ED?

As you can't play in the past or in the future, currently is the best time to play E:D!

Are there a good amount of players?

It depends on a star system, how popular it is. Keep in mind that E:D stimulates the whole galaxy, while only a small percentage of people of a single planet (Earth) is populating it.

There are, of course, NPCs. So the place is crowded enough, if you just want to play the game.

What about Odyssey? Worth buying?

It depends on how much you want its content. Only you can answer that question for yourself. Everybody will have different opinions on if it's worth buying.

For me it was worth it, even not for on foot content. Because it also adds some more planets to visit in my ship. It will bring some new ships in a month, too.

[Xirad]

It's always a good time to play ED! I'm coming back after a year hiatus and decided to start all over again, deleting my pilot that had a cool 50 mil just to do it all over. They've done a nice improvement on the new player tutorial but it's still not complete - doesn't go into the galaxy map I noticed, though it says "we'll get into that later", but I didn't need that part.

I bought Odyssey as soon as it came out just to support Frontier. Unfortunately my graphics card can't really handle it. Trying to play the tutorial mission it became a frustrating slide show once the shooting started and all I could do was watch my guy die. I see in the time since the Nvidia Experience now has Odyssey listed so the "community" settings might make it playable although nearly all that awesome eye candy will be disabled.

Happy playing Commander!

o7

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Xirad:

I bought Odyssey as soon as it came out just to support Frontier. Unfortunately my graphics card can't really handle it. Trying to play the tutorial mission it became a frustrating slide show once the shooting started and all I could do was watch my guy die. I see in the time since the Nvidia Experience now has Odyssey listed so the "community" settings might make it playable although nearly all that awesome eye candy will be disabled.

You might be pleasantly surprised - they've released about 12-14 patches which improved performance.

If you haven't played for years and it's still the same PC, make sure you erase the contents of your graphics settings folder so it recreates them.

%LocalAppData%\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous\Options\Graphics\

Uninstalling/reinstalling doesn't touch the config folders, so it's worth doing.

[Demon]

Now that Frontier has Odyssey under control, finally, game runs fine now.
Still has a player-base but rarely in Open Play as I always play Open and never see others even in hot spots. If I do it's generally a gank feast even though I run an A rated Imperial Cutter.

Despite what people say, here soon you'll be able to skip any grinds or credits to buy ships and some Odyssey adds as there was only one pre-built ship to buy with arx and in the last month there are now 5 as well as arx for suits . Give it some time and all ships and base items will have the option to buy with arx.

Most will call me out on that but I've been around the gaming industry too long and have seen when a company does something like this players will by arx more and give Frontier more bling bling. This day and age PTW is the way to play, even though there is nothing to win, it won't stop. But at least this will encourage players to stay a bit longer and servers will get funding thus increasing the lifespan of Elite for a time.

I'm good with this....:)

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Originally posted by Demon:

But at least this will encourage players to stay a bit longer

Would it? If I will have to pay real money for the in-game gear, and I have tons of other games to play where I don't have to do it, I would rather play those other games instead.

[Sighman]

Originally posted by Demon:

Give it some time and all ships and base items will have the option to buy with arx.

Most will call me out on that but I've been around the gaming industry too long and have seen when a company does something like this players will by arx more and give Frontier more bling bling.

If they charge for early access to each new ship, and the money they earn from that pays for developing the next new ship, that's not a bad thing in my opinion.

The amount they charge is small, and the base game is all but free when on sale. It's not a lot of money for potentially hours of fun, and it's not even compulsory like a new DLC.

I've been playing games on a home computer for over 40 years now. I'd rather pay a small amount every few months to keep ED around than spend those same bucks on a couple of 80% off games from a Steam Sale which I'll probably never even install.

[funkynutz]

Originally posted by Nobody:

Originally posted by Alec White:

Is currently a good time to play ED? Are there a good amount of players?
What about Odyssey? Worth buying?

It's always a good time to play ED.

Except for about 10 minutes on Thursday mornings...

[Nobody]

Originally posted by funkynutz:

Originally posted by Nobody:

It's always a good time to play ED.

Except for about 10 minutes on Thursday mornings...

And let's not forget internet outages. That's also a bad time to play ED.