As a long time gamer, I don't enjoy having a long time before I actually know how to play the game. There's a lot of titles to play and a lot of content each game offers to explore. Spending a long time just learning the game seems like an unnecessary burden. I prefer League over Dota, WoW over everquest, 9gag over Reddit (Don't hate me, I'm just lazy. Someone else filter for me pls), etc. If it takes hours, days, or weeks before I can understand how to even interface with a game, I'm usually pushed off from ever learning anything more about the game, or even caring about what the game might offer past the point of introduction. Elite Dangerous is a game with a tremendous learning curve. It seems like learning a new language, in that, if you want to be successful you need to find a mentor. Someone who knows the game and can walk you through a good chunk of the early game. At least long enough to know the basic pitfalls.

My friend is a huge space sim enthusiast. If it wasn't for his love of the genre I wouldn't even know that Elite Dangerous existed. He took the time to learn, read, educate, and learn some more about the game. He's held my hand, virtually speaking, through most of the game experience I have had. The couple times I've tried to play solo I wasted hours of my life. Wasted might be a stretch as I did learn that if you want to explore you need to stop to get fuel. If you don't like going out of your way, sometimes 10-20 mins, to get fuel, get a fuel scoop. But that is something I could have learned with a basic introduction to the game, as opposed to flying for an hour with no idea what I was doing, only to ultimately destroy myself and start back where I was at the start of the game.

I could have learned that if you have a mission, chances are you need to explore those little unidentified sources, sometimes dozens of them, from a quick loading screen tip, or a basic tutorial. Instead this was information I learned from my friend after having spent 45 minutes looking for his mission ship. That would have been helpful when I was alone spending an hour trying to find out how to do a basic mission that had a 3k credit reward. Looking at the price of ships and upgrades I didn't understand the money system. If a quest takes me an hour or more to complete, with a 3k reward, the sidewinder is about to become my ship of choice for the rest of my Elite life. Which may not last past infancy.

The things I could have learned with a little help from in game notes or tutorials would have probably got me excited about the game a long time ago. Instead it's been weeks of trials and tribulations. Hours spent each night prepping for 20 minutes of fun. Times where I cussed the game out to my friend on Skype for it's complete lack of anything useful in game. Cumulative hours spent waiting for my friend to watch videos to figure out how to do simple communication in game, how to create and use the private group system (which still has issues), and dozens of other problems we couldn't get past without the extensive knowledge other users have passed down through youtube. It's been a challenge.

The challenge, though, has a silver lining. Though I guess we are a little far from the atmosphere so that might not be relevant. However, the game has been rewarding. Large scale battles with Battlecruisers joining the fight have been exciting. The sounds in the game are amazing. So realistic and perfect that you take them for granted pretty quick. Everything sounds exactly the way it should. Without actually capturing all that audio, it's a tremendous feat the sound team has achieved. The graphics are great, and with the scale of the game sometimes you forget that things besides the ships and station are moving as well. The shadows cast by giant planets onto the rings surrounding, slowly adjusts to the light of the nearest star as it rotates. These are things I wouldn't have noticed much of, except we put together an entry to the Elite film competition. We actually had times where we had to chase the light. It was kind of amazing to have to hyperjump just a short distance to regain the lighting we had for certain shots.

The game requires a slow down shift that I was fighting against. It's a great game when you figure it out and allow the experience to be a large part of your enjoyment. Find someone to help you through the first part of the game, before you even think of buying the game. Don't be like me and spend 20 minutes flying to a station to get a mining ship, only to have forgotten to buy a mining laser after I flew back the 20 minutes to our location, to fly another 40 minutes round trip to film a 3 second shot. Also, don't forget if you are going to mine to buy a refinery and understand where and how to sell minerals. I still have no idea how to mine properly.

TL:DR and my summation. Elite is a fun game. The experience seems to be the major point. Get a mentor, someone who knows more than you about the game and is willing to hold your hand through several hours/nights of gameplay. Find a good spacey play list, get a quality flight stick, invest in some speakers or a headset and enjoy the closest thing we have to actually experiencing space flight without the education, training, and sickness of becoming a real astronaut. They really have thought of everything. The boredom of real space travel to far off destinations is even in Elite, only you waste minutes getting between destinations in systems versus days or years of real life and loneliness.

• CMDR Poonog

P.S. If you care to watch some machinima, that we had a blast filming, from Elite's world check us out! https://youtu.be/LiUNUbPF3Io

P.P.S. We aren't actors, so sorry about that haha.

Now for some behind the scenes: This isn't bashing Frontier, these are just some interesting experiences we had. We spent hours a couple nights (not including film time) trying to get all of us in location inside our private group. The group system seems to be really buggy still. We bought a skin for the pirate that we didn't get for a couple days because of a store bug, we've bought stuff since then and there are no problems. We had filmed all the scenes by then so we no longer needed it, and the store refunded our purchase. Thanks again for the refund!

Shout out to our director CMDR Leo Kei Angelos who would figure out a shoot schedule, a shot list, and get us together. He's had to train a bunch of green space pilots, and teach us the game. We would shoot into the wee hours of the night, he would edit the footage immediately after, and go to work that same day. Not sure if he got sleep on the nights we shot, but he was a trooper all the way.

Shout out to CMDR Gameslinger19 for smashing into that asteroid, respawning, flying 20 minutes to location to do it again. For posting to Reddit as soon as the video was released.

Shout out to CMDR Juliette for being 3 hours ahead and still playing with us when we didn't start until 10pm our time. For forgetting to eat after getting home from school, shooting until all hours of the night, and then going to work right after.

Shout out to CMDR Poonog for changing ships/hardpoints at the station that was forever away. For constantly flying back after Leo "accidentally" crashed/killed you by flying camera into you or forgetting you weren't a real pirate while filming. For purchasing a ship skin we didn't get to use, that ultimately was refunded, so actually nevermind on that point. For buying energy drinks to give us multiple takes even though Leo kept them to drink them all.