Elite: Dangerous is advertised as a MMO space sandbox with a persistent universe. This is great for the story. It is great for the game universe. It allows us to interact with other players. What could possibly go wrong?

EVE Online is notorious for its hostile universe. Yes, there are players in EVE who shoot you out of the sky for the lulz. There are players who will scam every single penny out of you for the lulz. There are stories of corporations brought down by a single player for the lulz.
What I’ve seen so far in Elite is pretty harmless, but then I haven’t clocked more than two hours of game time. I don’t know why, but I keep not finding the time needed to play. Maybe, hopefully, this will change and I get to see more of this universe and its possibilities. Anyway: Elite is not a pure MMO, as it allows you to play solo or just with a group of friends in a universe settled only by NPC. There are many reasons why one would want this (and many why one wouldn’t). This is the story of one of it.

I got a transport mission via the bulletin board. Take these goods, jump over to a neighbouring system and deliver. We’ll pay good creds. Alright, I thought, let’s do this. I took the goods, jumped over to the other system, cruised to my destination and… didn’t get a docking permit. It was more of an outpost than a station (I’ll elaborate on the difference in a later post) and had a very limited number of docking ports. And many players and NPC contesting for it.
After some not-so-few minutes I decided to jump back to where I started. I docked, went back to the main menu and restarted in solo mode. Needless to say, I got a docking port on first try.
Even though it was a hassle to jump back and redo the mission in solo mode, not having a solo mode would probably ruined the game for me for good. While I actually enjoy the space delivery business quite a bit, I don’t need space traffic jams, congested space highways (I’m looking at you, X:Rebirth) or closed space parking lots due to overcrowding.
I’ll probably talk about the deeper sense and nonsense of the different stations in a future post. I might also abuse the E:D-categorie for some more theoretical ramblings over the holidays, as I don’t think my netbook will run it. You’ve been warned.