Considering that I have more hours in E:D than in any other game ever, that I'm chief of the Elite: Dangerous tribe and I'm now with a project to visit every single inhabited system on the game... I'd wouldn't go so far as say it failled horribly. It certainly matched my expectations, of course, this being the internets, there's always a lot of people with diffenrent opinions, and that's ok.
My expectations for the game were: Flying around buying low and selling high, shooting NPCs for fun and profit. Basically, what I had in the original game with cutting edge graphics. I got what I payd for (I'm Premium Beta backer) plus some. As soon as I have a few more screenshots of my great journey, I'll publish it here. The visuals alone are worth the hundred quid I paid for it.
For me, I believed what they said about "being able to play any way you wanted". In my case, space combat... because it had great feeling flying, physics that made sense, and great weapons/power management. What I actually got was instancing that is inconsistent and frustrating, a whole load of weapons that are pretty terrible to use, only 4 ships that are viable for PvP, countless hitbox quirks... and then a PowerPlay system that would logically encourage PvP conflicts, but instead actively disincentivize it.
Then an expansion that was supposed to be optional that they want me to pay another $60 for... that also isn't actually a finished product.
I don't know, man. I picked up the game like 3 days before Wings went live. After two weeks of PowerPlay, I never found the desire to start the game anymore...and their practice with the expansion pretty much confirmed my feelings.
EDIT: Sure you can fight the NPCs but... eh, a Viper taking out Anacondas isn't the most exciting situation. They've buffed the AI more than once, but at the end of the day, it's not a human, nor does it fly like one.
Considering that I have more hours in E:D than in any other game ever, that I'm chief of the Elite: Dangerous tribe and I'm now with a project to visit every single inhabited system on the game... I'd wouldn't go so far as say it failled horribly. It certainly matched my expectations, of course, this being the internets, there's always a lot of people with diffenrent opinions, and that's ok.
My expectations for the game were: Flying around buying low and selling high, shooting NPCs for fun and profit. Basically, what I had in the original game with cutting edge graphics. I got what I payd for (I'm Premium Beta backer) plus some. As soon as I have a few more screenshots of my great journey, I'll publish it here. The visuals alone are worth the hundred quid I paid for it.
For me, I believed what they said about "being able to play any way you wanted". In my case, space combat... because it had great feeling flying, physics that made sense, and great weapons/power management. What I actually got was instancing that is inconsistent and frustrating, a whole load of weapons that are pretty terrible to use, only 4 ships that are viable for PvP, countless hitbox quirks... and then a PowerPlay system that would logically encourage PvP conflicts, but instead actively disincentivize it.
Then an expansion that was supposed to be optional that they want me to pay another $60 for... that also isn't actually a finished product.
I don't know, man. I picked up the game like 3 days before Wings went live. After two weeks of PowerPlay, I never found the desire to start the game anymore...and their practice with the expansion pretty much confirmed my feelings.
EDIT: Sure you can fight the NPCs but... eh, a Viper taking out Anacondas isn't the most exciting situation. They've buffed the AI more than once, but at the end of the day, it's not a human, nor does it fly like one.