I started playing Elite: Dangerous in the past couple days, trying to actually give it a fair shot instead of getting aggravated because I couldn’t figure out how to do something between calls. It’s going….well, it’s going. After a ton of battling my controls, I can fly at least, fly without immediately crashing into things. And without whipping out my weapons at the drop of a hat, that is improvement at least. Unlike the last five times I’ve tried it, I did manage to complete a mission without getting aggravated and uninstalling it. It wasn’t anything major, just a simple delivery in the starting batch of planets, but even that was a battle. Trying to plot a route, pointing my ship in the correct direction, starting and stopping my Frame Shift to get as close to the designated area before dropping back to “normal” speed, making sure I’ve requested docking access, again, a battle, but one I managed to figure out slowly. Then once I reached the destination, having to go on a hunt to find the person I was supposed to deliver the package to. That took far longer than it should have, because I couldn’t find a building that was open to search them with. Getting back was another endeavor. Did I get stuck the planet I was leaving’s orbit? Yes. And it took a couple minutes to regain my bearings, boost out, and get back to where I started. If I got jumped there, I’d have been wiped out easily, but mercifully, I managed to get myself reorientated and back where I needed to be, but it’s a lot of buttons and things to remember, and I’m having to constantly reference my controls. How would I describe my experience? In two words, Baby Steps. It’s like I’m learning how to do a million things on the fly, whether it’s easy or not, and the game simply does not care whether I’m comfortable or not, I’m still going to learn. It’s helping, because I know there’s consequences to my screwups. If I have my weapons out close to a station, I either put them away or get dinged. I don’t call and request docking access, I don’t get to land, so I have enough choice but to learn everything. On one hand, it’s frustrating, because there’s all these tedious things I have to figure out instead of the game just doing it for me, but on the other, I appreciate it. I appreciate feeling like I’m in the world, having to do things like a person in that setting would. I appreciate having to learn all these things, because if I stick with this, one day it’ll all be like riding a bicycle, all be things that are just second nature. I can already feel a difference from when I first picked it back up, because I do remember some buttons, I know how to navigate better than I did, accessing my communications isn’t a struggle like it was. It kind of makes me feel like an idiot, but if I don’t push past that feeling, I’ll never learn. I have to be uncomfortable before I can learn and grow with it. I like to think I’m intelligent enough, but I don’t like the feeling that I’m dumb. This game is making me feel dumb, but feeling dumb is the first step towards knowing what I’m doing. And the more I mess with the controls, the more I fly, the less dumb I’ll feel just from experience. It’s difficult right now, I want to play it like No Man’s Sky, but it’s not. It’s a wholly different game, with a whole different rule set and I have to figure it out. I’m starting to, but I really wish my ship didn’t feel like a boat to fly. I’d like it if I could maybe zoom and see where I’m turning, and maybe I can and just haven’t figured it out yet. Maybe I should plug my controller in just for flying. But again, I have to push through these initial feelings of “oh god am I actually stupid?” because right now I’m like a baby bird learning how its wings work. I don’t know what I don’t know, and have to keep fiddling with the dials until I do. Once I get out in open space with other players, I’ll have no choice but to learn it I don’t want to get shanked for what I’ve managed to cobble together. So I guess it’s better to struggle out in tutorial island where there is space (hah!) to mess up, to do stupid things while I have a safety net as I learn what I can assume are the ropes. It’s Baby Steps though, I’ll figure it out soon enough. The more I do it, the easier the next run will be, and I just repeat that, and I’ll have it down. The more exposure to what I have to do, more experienced I get at it, the less I’ll feel like an idiot when I climb into the cockpit of whatever ship I drive, especially when I get to the larger ships you can walk around in. I should play it a little more tonight, shouldn’t I?