User blog comment:Gokuofuin/Elite Dangerous (The Needs & The Wants)/@comment-34043634-20171222113456

Elite Dangerous is definetly NOT Flight Simulator in Space. 

As a matter of fact, the interaction with the ship is extremely limited to firing the guns, going up , down , left ,right, forward , backward and pitch up, down, left right, lauch shield cell, chaff, warrant scanner and wake scanner. 

Fight Simulator offer 1000 times more interaction with the plane and it comes very close to actual thing even when flying jets. 

There is a strategic part of the game where players influence the political , economical and socialogical part of the entire galaxy , called BGS which is a short version of Background Simulator which basically simulates the economy, politics and social structure of the galaxy. Anything you do in the game affects this at local level that affects factions, social groups , sometimes citizens, sometimes businessment , sometimes pirates or sometimes something in between based on two criteria, reputation and influence. Losing reputation will make you a hostile and you will be attacked and be killed on site, or be pursued by assasins to exterminate you. If reputation is high you will be offered far more profitable missions and raise in the ranks of the specific faction although you can play all sides and cause a civil war because you actions affect the influence of the faction which in turns affects who posses what asset . Assets being stations and planet bases. Missions can affect reputation and influence the same or more the reputation or more the influence of a specific faction depending on the type of mission.

I can go on forever about BGS , this is only a taste of what it can do and with the introduction of player factions we have now complex interaction with players. My faction was at war recently with another faction and did not end very well for them. 

There is also Powerplay as well as the basic story of the game which is humans vs Thargoids that is also influenced by player actions.

The Elite universe is complex and deep, but is well hidden because developers did not want to turn this to the monster that EVE is. Elite does not force you down a steep learning curve, like EVE, its actually hides pretty much everything away from you and you will have to search online and interact with player via forums, discord chats and of course the wiki hosted in the webstie to really understand the depth of the game as well as use an army of tools to refine your gameplay. To the average gamer that just wants to have fun flying spaceships the game will appear simple and straighforward. 

But as it is usually the case in life, there is more, that meets the eye.

In case of Elite, what you see is just the tip, of the tip, of the tip of the iceberg.

I am playing this game for 2 years now I have barely scratched the surface.  

The interactions you suggest are FPS (First Person Shooter) and deviate a lot from the character of the game which puts emphasis on spaceship and strategy and not FPS experience.

If you want a more FPS there is Star Citizen and No Man Sky that do this very well but cannot do what Elite does ;)

Its the usual case of not be able to have your cake and eat it too. 

There are a ton of things that can be improved in the game, personally I have zero interest on FPS featuers as well planet landing and planet exploration/interaction. 

Ironically I would love if the game was what you assumed it to be, a Flight Simulator in space. Which means basically far deeper interaction with the spaceship, more control over its systems, more abilities used to explore space and even perform scientific experiments. Walking around the ship is something I don't care about and means nothing to me, its the interactions themselves that interest me. 

You can modify modules via enginners and custom make your ship to fit exactly the role you want.