Is there any actual public roadmap or major content coming to Elite or just updates and fixes?
God knows Ed, I won't lie but at least three versions by my count (Vanilla, Special and VR), I haven't played it in a good half decade myself. I only know about it being 'a thing' still due to my RPG loving friends banging the drum still, and every time it resurfaces in pop gaming culture.
It's literally semantics, same word, different meaning. I apologize I couldn't find a nicer way to word your viewpoint, couldn't think of that. I still think my definition makes more logical sense in 2023, nobody releases a complete game anymore, and, I'm trying to be nice, but yours just sounds more "feel good"-y, could be applied to anything, and isn't very informative.
As an aside, I was playing CS1.6 in amateur leagues at that time, and it wasn't dead to us until all the leagues swapped to CS:S. Also competitive round based games(CS,UT,Q3,TF2) are only dead A)when every server is empty/matchmaking fails B)the servers literally all go down. And sometimes not even then.
Yes, we're using different definitions. No, I don't think a game ceases to exist once it stops being developed, I was speaking of being updated consistently over a long period of time, but we had this conversation above.
I personally am the type of person that can't play a single player game, even with mods, for very long without getting bored. Most of my favorite games are single player, but theres only so much you can do, even with mods. And at a certain point, it gets kind of lonely(especially in Bethesda games), and starts to feel pointless. Again, me personally, everyone is different and I'm not saying your wrong if you play nothing but Skyrim every day, I just get burned out on the monotony and lack of continuity.
Which is why I primarily play Live Service online games like Elite nowadays. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
LOOKS EMBARRASSED
I started a new game yesterday as I got a discounted SE recently. I had lost the thread from my last save, which was from 2015
game's definitely in wind-down mode IMO. they're only focussing on narrative, there's very little new content or gameplay systems, and the narrative updates have been so slow in arrival it's been like reading a children's book over the course of 2 to 3 years.
I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the story because it's been broken up into tiny pieces and told over an inordinately long period of time. there's no coherence at all to it. it might be a bit more interesting if it wasn't stretched out so much but meh, how can anyone say confidently that more major updates are coming to Elite when they give us no hints that they care enough about that themselves and the current updates are utterly bare bones?
I have absolutely no idea what's going on in the story because it's been broken up into tiny pieces and told over an inordinately long period of time. there's no coherence at all to it. it might be a bit more interesting if it wasn't stretched out so much but meh, how can anyone say confidently that more major updates are coming to Elite when they give us no hints that they care enough about that themselves and the current updates are utterly bare bones?
It can be very swings and roundabouts with live service games as well, I think its important to note, because once they close down the servers, its usually 'Good night Vienna' in a way that non-server reliant games can circumvent. Again, there are exceptions to that rule due to the efforts of a robust community, see: Star Wars: Galaxies, City of Heroes or Battlestar Galactica: Online
And I get what you mean. I generally play multiplayer focused games when I am at home between ships, and single player ones when I am away without an internet connection, as I and my friends tend to use them as a means to keep in touch whilst we're scattered all around the country (or even world in some cases).
Admitedly, we then go play weird things like Wolfpack (A multicrew submarine simulator), ArmA or DCS so I'm probably not the best person to champion its case.
I'd agree, that the theoretical 10% would be best used for optimization and bugs IMO. As far as UI colors go, I think if it was a simple as it looked on the outside, it would have happened already, but we can see it's not due to the fact that the UI color scheme is also linked to NPC portraits etc. I'm sure it wasn't thought of as a feature to change UI colors, or at most discarded as an idea if it was, so it was never factored into the development of the UI. Though hopefully someday.
Overall though, the reason why I asked OP this is because I do think it would good to throw in some smaller low hanging fruit type stuff into these updates.
I feel like having our NPC crewmembers sitting next to us would be pretty cool, we see NPC Apex pilots so it seems the tech is in place to do that, though of course the scope of something like that immediately gets ballooned with the question that naturally follows; "If we can see them in our cockpit, why not on foot too?"
And this is maybe where Starfield might do Elite a favor as it seems that's exactly how that game is going to work. Now Frontier could implement the same thing without being dogged with accusations of being lazy developers by not letting the NPCs walk out with you, without any thought to the fact that it likely adds a significant layer of extra resources to implement properly, which is probably why Bethesda has seemingly opted to have a robot that just stands there next to the ship to interact with.
Another good one that seems reasonable would be to add entering and exiting the ship via the doors and do away with the blue circle. I could see that taking time to do due to there being multiple ships and some with multiple boarding points, but maybe not technically too challenging.
Though both of the above don't really qualify for OP wanting non-Thargoid content added either to be fair. Anway, seems OP never replied so it's moot now anyway.
It's like Minecraft I guess. I think certain games that achieve a level where they become forever games start to resemble platforms of their own rather than 'just' games.One question on the Skyrim front, how many version are there over the last decade? It seems to me they are polishing that meal ticket as long as they can
After the launch of a major expansion the following time might seem like 'winding down', but I don't think that's the case. You could say that the development resources committed to Elite might have been scaled back due to the poor launch of Odyssey and the financial fallout from that, but not winding down.
Narratives unfold over time, there's an ongoing galactic invasion happening in realtime, how long do you think it should take?
I guess you're too invested in downing Elite to pay attention to what's happening. That's your choice, for better or worse.
Fair enough, but did the things you mentioned really get worse? My impressions as a player who wasn't there at the beginning is that it was always this way in ED.
- From the initial original version to landable planets: 1 year
- From landable planets to engineers: 6 months
- From engineers in the bubble to engineers in Colonia: 2 years
- From the first in-game Thargoids to the last AX Alliance C-ship (Crusader): 11 months
- The Azimuth saga story arc lasted almost 2 years
Seriously? are you only playing in legacy? The thargoid war has introduced new systems, new senarios, new enemies and new mechanics. You might not want to engage with them because it’s not your kind of thing, but these are massive amounts of dev work and content to play through.
Back to the OP’s question; all we know so far is update 16 in six weeks or so, and the an update 17 at some point before the end of the year. In addition, there is the revealing of the feature rewrite plans, which could range from ‘this is what we wanted to do, but it was too hard.’ To ‘Here’s what we plan to do and here are the projected time scales we’re aiming for.’
At that point this game will be nine years old, and after the financial hit from Odyssey; I highly doubt we’ll see an update of that level again. That’s a shame because I would love to see a full vr mode, more planetary types and ship interiors (probably in that order) to help for fill it’s potential. However, you do get the feeling they’re winding things down because of less CMs and communication being cut back again, when ironically, we’re going to have more updates this year than last.
Is this unique to ED, or has Frontier cut down on comminications generally across its franchises? Frontier Foundry has been effectively shut down and Frontier give off the air of retrenchment.
Franchises like Elite do not come along all the time and Frontier might do well to remember that.
Fdev have some big releases coming out soon, Warhammer and, probably more importantly, the next iteration of the F1 game. That’s where their focus is at the moment and they normally more resources if there’s a crunch. What I am pleasantly surprised about, when the last time they focused elsewhere, the game was effectively in maintenance mode, with no Galnet or CGs until fleet carriers arrived, at least we have 16, 17 and the feature upgrade to look forward to.
On the flip side, we knew that Something big was in the works at the time (which made the wait bearable ) but no such big upgrade has been announced.
On the flip side, we knew that Something big was in the works at the time (which made the wait bearable ) but no such big upgrade has been announced.
Just a rework
If it is the integration of the BGS, Powerplay and the existing thargoid war. that would be a massive re-write of a lot of key systems. I'm hoping its not a rework of engineering again!Just a rework
Or January passes and nothing is communicated about the feature rework, then we can amuse ourselves with discussing if the game is dedd or not, and maybe have a debate over Frontier's communication capabilities.
No, but not finding something with such an easily defined google search is a pretty good indication.