Is it just me or have other people realised that this isn't the 16th of December yet?

So guys, what's the excuse going to be on the 16th?
We can't use "IT'S BETA!" or "IT'S GAMMA!" anymore once it's released.

Are we going for "IT'S ONLY JUST RELEASED!"?
Should hold us over for a month or two.
Well we should be going for "they're still working on it". Which is true.

But then they'll have to vastly expand the game's features for that to work. There's a ton of work ahead of them.
 
Except they're doing it wrong.

It's been said time and time again, but the paint jobs are overpriced.

Well if that is true and FD notice they are not selling many paint jobs then I am sure they will drop the price.

That being said what they are charging for a paint job is a very similar price to what Wargaming charge for a full camo set for a tank in WOT and they dont seem to be doing too badly...
 
The way I see it, you have set in stone all the game features you need in the game before you can leave beta and call it 1.0.. A 'Scope' for the project.
We have this in the design documents archive - a comprehensive list of things that were to be done by the release.
A few things even have a note next to them that they will come shortly after release, implying that the rest was to be done by the release.

Well that hasn't worked out. The game at present is nowhere near those documents - there's a massive amount missing or unfinished.

I am very pleased with the game so far and happy to wait myself. I can see that it WILL come together in the end, the underlying game is great with massive potential.
However I agree with others when we say that if the game releases as it is now, bad reviews are inevitable, maybe 6/10 at best. Then that future is under threat as there is generally no second chance at releasing a game.
Look what happened to X Rebirth..! Released still-born I'd say.

I really wasn't expecting it to be rushed out being there is no publisher involved, but it seems that they had a deadline and are sticking to it regardless of whether the game meets up to all the features they wanted to have in the initial released version.

I would be way more accepting of waiting even past what they call release to see the features that were anticipated, but this needs to be communicated. If they're just holding off to get more sales, and, although I want them to get more sales, but if they're misleading people on what they can and cannot do to achieve this, then how I can trust that these things will happen? Or is it a game that after a bit of exploring, a few upgrades, I'm done?
 
That said I really hope Frontier prove me wrong and release a version full of the DDF stuff.

Why do people always reference to DDF ... this was never more than just a design discussion playground HOW things COULD BE in our wishful thinking to entertain ourselfs.
Can't remeber FD saying ... ok its now DDF design freezed and we WILL do that.
 
Except they're doing it wrong.

It's been said time and time again, but the paint jobs are overpriced.

They are both over-priced and pointless without an external view.

Also a lot of us are getting expansions and a variety of paintjobs as part of our deals. Frontier have got most of the money out of us as they are likely to get. It is new customers they need for income and that's where the reviews and word of mouth are going to matter.

Hell, an extremely good full featured game like Dragon Age Inquisition is getting crucified in customer reviews for various not very good reasons. Unfortunately ED has given very good reasons for people to post low scores.

Its under-delivery on features, its lack of any MMO features while loudly claiming to be an MMO and the Offline fiasco. I'm a fan and i couldn't in any honesty give it more than 6/10 at most so God knows what angered ex-fans and over-sold and disappointed new purchasers are going to say.

If a friend asked my opinion I'd say:

'Wait 6 months and then buy it. There's a lot of better games to be playing over Xmas.'

And don't forget - ED is news not just gaming news. It's launch will make the wider news both for being Elite and for being Kickstarter.
 
I just laugh when I see posters saying things like "I don't think we are seeing the full game yet", "Why is everyone complaining about a game that hasn't even been released yet?" because we have heard the same excuses during the Beta. This game is being debugged, Any fool can look at the number of bugs still currently in the game and see that is all they have time for right now. I have no doubt there are aspects that were not going to make the release date and so have been put on the back burner - almost finished features, but they will wait until the game is out the door to implement.

Many have exclaimed their woes from on high about the lack of multiplayer connectivity and I agree with them as it is exteamely important to this game. However, I personally feel the bulletin board is my major gripe of concern. I shuddered with horror when I first seen it and was beaten back on these forums being told "it's just a beta!" and that it was merely testing mission structure. We can all see now that a mission structure fitting for a game of the 1980's has been peddled off to us leaving a gaping void of disbelief in what essentially is an excellent game at heart.

With much time to ponder on this issue I have begun to believe that we never are going to see NPC's or interaction with them in this game at least not until 'the walking around space stations feature' is added. FD and David Braben have said many times in videos that they do not want to approach a feature without doing it right. This to me says that interaction with NPC's will be face to face when you are walking around. This is great for the game long term but in the short term until that day comes it seems that the bulletin BORED! will be our only means of interacting with so called NPC's...

At the moment the game feels shallow for me and that is mainly because what I was hoping for was a game like the old Elite but with mission strings to take up like in GTA or Red Dead Redemption. Again with time to ponder on this I am now of the opinion that when this 'dynamic world' appears come the 16th that we will find our story and motivation in the lore of the game that is being fed to us. New meaning to our actions will be met by deciding to gun run weapons to one side of a war or deprive another starving system of food. Statisticly we are supposed to have an impact. If that is true even the mundane actions such as space trucking should feel like they have a point to them.

If this is true and we are not being sold a lie I believe this might be very good indeed and something we have not seen in a game so far (at least not that I know of) and might just maybe be a stroke of genius.

If however it is a white lie as some has suggested and is merely random generation of events with a bit of prodding by the mods it might well fall flat on its face and leave more egg spread all over it than FD will ever be capable of wiping away!

I suppose we will find out soon enough..!
 
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Well if that is true and FD notice they are not selling many paint jobs then I am sure they will drop the price.

That being said what they are charging for a paint job is a very similar price to what Wargaming charge for a full camo set for a tank in WOT and they dont seem to be doing too badly...
Well you can actually see your tank in this game, and there are well enough players around you to see it too, obviously it's of an entirely different value than a paint job for a ship you can only see on the outfitting screen, and that other players will rarely ever see because they're nowhere to be seen.

And then, WoT camo sets start at $0.14, you can still earn them from playing the game, and even then, you at least have a couple free ones to choose from. As it stands in Elite: Dangerous, the only way to get skins is to pay them with real money.

So yeah, it's quite different, and the elements that made WoT popular, and the camos worth buying, are nowhere to be seen here. Yes, Frontier is certainly doing it wrong.
 
Well you can actually see your tank in this game, and there are well enough players around you to see it too, obviously it's of an entirely different value than a paint job for a ship you can only see on the outfitting screen, and that other players will rarely ever see because they're nowhere to be seen.

And then, WoT camo sets start at $0.14, you can still earn them from playing the game, and even then, you at least have a couple free ones to choose from. As it stands in Elite: Dangerous, the only way to get skins is to pay them with real money.

So yeah, it's quite different, and the elements that made WoT popular, and the camos worth buying, are nowhere to be seen here. Yes, Frontier is certainly doing it wrong.

If they make a quality enough game that people have a lot of fun playing, people would even give them a subscription, and even buy dlc.

Eve is subscription based and has had 40,000+ subscriptions at all times. How do I know this? Because they usually at LEAST 40,000 people connected to the server on average.
Microtransactions are the bane of video games, I feel majority of the time they significantly reduce the quality of the game. I will admit there is a few games that I thought did well on them.

A few.
 
If they make a quality enough game that people have a lot of fun playing, people would even give them a subscription, and even buy dlc.

Eve is subscription based and has had 40,000+ subscriptions at all times. How do I know this? Because they usually at LEAST 40,000 people connected to the server on average.
Microtransactions are the bane of video games, I feel majority of the time they significantly reduce the quality of the game. I will admit there is a few games that I thought did well on them.

A few.

It's a reasonable point, but there are several factors I think you are missing here.

The first is that the market has shifted away from subscription based games. The reason why EVE and why games like WoW still retain a sizable playerbase is because of the investments put into their character / pilot - EVE moreso because of the realtime based skillset that you train. DLC rich games work when there is a solid foundation from which to base DLC on, guild wars, again WoW and even games like battlefield 4 are able to do this because the replay / competitive factor is there. EVE itself is built around multiplayer functionality from player driven markets to territorial control. At the moment sadly, ED does not yet have this level of depth to justify trying to go down the subscription route and even if it did, with the recent s**tstorm regarding refunds still ongoing this would likely be received extremely poorly by gaming newsfeeds and the wider playerbase. As much as people may not like micro transactions, provided they are not intrusive they are a perfectly reasonable business model and one that suits ED well. Instead I think the question should be, who are we going to target and how can we ensure player retention as opposed to what's the best way to make quick money. If they succeed at the former, the latter will come on its own accord.

Just my 2 cents anyway.
 
If they make a quality enough game that people have a lot of fun playing, people would even give them a subscription, and even buy dlc.

Eve is subscription based and has had 40,000+ subscriptions at all times. How do I know this? Because they usually at LEAST 40,000 people connected to the server on average.
Microtransactions are the bane of video games, I feel majority of the time they significantly reduce the quality of the game. I will admit there is a few games that I thought did well on them.

A few.
you missed zero on subscription count.

Then, EvE do have microtransactions. Buy PLEX fo $$, sell in Jita for ISK, buy stuff in-game. (Also AUR shop microtransactions : Skins, clothes, monocles ...)

It also can be free-to-play. Just earn enough ISK to buy PLEX.

Also, subscriptions are not users. Before my corp imploded, running 3 boxes was standard. I ran 2. Mining ops are sometimes 10-box affairs.

The genius of CPP is that they have finger in all those pies.
 
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I think the old model of needing to get great reviews when a game comes out is completely outdated. There are more than enough core fans of Elite to keep it going until more features are developed. I think there will be a steady influx of new players as things progress. There's a lot of burnout going on.

My feeling is, its a 7/10 game as it stands. It doesn't need to score 9/10 on the 16th of December to be successful. Its not going to flop because there are enough players already to sustain it. 140,000 people have been playing the testing phase alone.

Many people just wanted an updated version of Elite, and this is what we have, plus some. If anyone thought a game like this was going to be smooth sailing, they were sadly misguided.

Judge Elite Dangerous in 2015
 
I think the old model of needing to get great reviews when a game comes out is completely outdated. There are more than enough core fans of Elite to keep it going until more features are developed.

The core fans are here and we've given them our money already as kickstarters, beta buy-in's and pre-orders. Core Elite fans aren't mugs or so frozen in aspic in terms of expectations that they will buy what is essentially 1980's game-play in the teeth of mediocre reviews.

I hope you're right though because I'm an old Elite fan who wants to be playing for years. Unfortunately at the moment I'm a deeply disappointed old Elite fan as well. What we have just isn't good enough.
 
This game will not sit still and there will be opportunity for the devs to fulfil almost all online players wishes once feedback starts rolling in from the launch. Just be patient!

Think of it as a plant. We planted the seed and watered the earth. We can hardly expect it to bear fruit immediately!

Since what we now have in gamma will pretty much the release candidate, it is a reasonable fear this fragile seedling will be stomped into ground waaay before it even has the chance to flower.

You really want gamers to be patient ? In what world do you live ? :D Sorry, that was rude.
There's basically nothing to do in this game besides grinding for better ships and equipment, and the ways you can gain money aren't exactly spectacular or built in a convenient way.

For example, the Equipment hunt, lots of the die-hard fans think of it as being "fun", but this will be ripped apart by casual players ( also, this worked different in FFE and wasn't as inconvenient, I still ask myself which game those guys played)
Or, even better, the ones who actually dare to suggest to use pen and paper to write down market prices or travel routes - this has the potential to kill the game. And mostly those suggesting such nonsense are the same people muttering about immersion and suspension of disbelief and stuff - yeah, very believable, year 3300 and they haven't figured out a way to do basic navigation ( but are capable of jump calculations).


Don't get me wrong, I don't want to say Elite is bad. But Elite seriously lacks some basic features everyone can reasonably await from a futuristic game ( Like Nav Points or ability to save trade data ), as well as it lacks features people can reasonably assume from a game that's marketed as a MMO ( Like Wings, proper Chat channels, Multiplayer Content etc. )
 
*SNIP*

In a years time all of this will be far from our minds as we roam and play with our ship's names emblazoned on our hulls and our status Dangerous, deadly and Elite in the vocation of our choice... :D:cool:

I would not bet on that last comment, all most five years ago people were worried about what was to be the launch state of Star Trek Online - and you go and look at their forums now.
Lots of "told you in Beta" and "missing since Beta" with some "broken since Beta" and a sprinkle of "it's been broken so long, it's now classed as a feature". If February it will be the five year anniversary of the game, where fans will come together to reminisce of all the things the game developer didn't do, the forgotten features and broken promises and share their reasons why the game developers should not be trusted to look after a pet rock let alone the game.
The fans here are no different.

Fans have long, long, long memories and hold grudges just as long if not longer.
 
I think the old model of needing to get great reviews when a game comes out is completely outdated. There are more than enough core fans of Elite to keep it going until more features are developed. I think there will be a steady influx of new players as things progress. There's a lot of burnout going on.

My feeling is, its a 7/10 game as it stands. It doesn't need to score 9/10 on the 16th of December to be successful. Its not going to flop because there are enough players already to sustain it. 140,000 people have been playing the testing phase alone.

Many people just wanted an updated version of Elite, and this is what we have, plus some. If anyone thought a game like this was going to be smooth sailing, they were sadly misguided.

Judge Elite Dangerous in 2015
That's not how things work though.

Reviews have never been more important than they are now. As it stands, it'll hardly get past 70%, and if it's not at least a 80%, it's a "failure", because there'll be a dozen >90% games release in the meantime, and people won't buy it. They won't wait until 2015 either. And they would be right.

You won't have people buy this game with the promise that it'll be better later on, that's the promise we got at beginning of the Kickstarter, but people are now expecting a finished product. You're in fact giving them what they precisely don't want, and those that could be ready to back a project that would "eventually" be better later on surely already backed it.

The game is about to be released in a beta state while still missing key features, and sadly I don't see this ending well
 
How any product is received is significant, in terms of revenue and encouraging customer and investor confidence. My own experience as to how ED is likely to be received was this weekend. We had friends round for Sunday lunch, an old friend of mine (have we known each other that long !!) as kids we spent hours on the original BBC 'B' version, days I guess. I had said look out, here comes the modern version but he is a lazy sod and never researched it so this weekend was the chance to show him the game.

Initial reactions were wow, OMG, it looks incredible. Basically where can I buy it. From there the question was about how we will play it, beyond doing our own thing as we wish I was asked can we fly the same ship together, a bit like when we were both crammed in front of the telly like back in the day. The answer to that was no, at least not yet, and as to when no idea, maybe never. OK, you have your ship I have mine we can get together and go and do stuff, we can work as a team, share profits yes ? Well, not exactly.... by the time I had gone over the basic concept of instances in the game and what it may be able to do instead of what it can or will the decision was along the lines of 'let me know when it does and I will grab a copy, it will probably be cheaper by then too'

If the above was hypothetical it would have no real meaning but that is exactly how it went down (we had roast pork, I had too much crackling and wine felt ill later) The point is I can see those sorts of issues having very similar results when it comes down to sales. Add to that not everyone is a lazy halfwit oaf like Jon, buyers tend to research their purchases far more (and ED is hardly likely to be an impulse buy kind of game anyway) and these gaps will hurt the game. I want it to succeed btw !
 
I thought of another reason reviews are more important for this game than most.
Assuming there's no demo, and there certainly wont be any piracy for people to test it out since it's online only, there's no way for someone to try before they buy, hence they will have no choice but to turn to word of mouth and reviews.

The training missions would make a good demo/tease come to think of it.
 
Initial ED reviews are likely to be ok-to-good, I'm guessing an average score around 7/10.

Really ? I'd say that 7/10 is a very good game, which in current state ED is simply not mainly because it's not really a game yet tbh. For an outsider (I consider myself an outsider as I never played any elite game before) this looks more like a Space Engine. Seriously. There very few actual gameplay features in it right now.
The Civ5 comparison doesn't work either. I enjoyed Civ5 quite a lot after launch. The 7/10 for that game was accurate IMHO. It was a very good game. As for ED in it's current state (never mind the bugs, just the actual game) I would rate it 4/10 and that's mostly for the nice graphics and sound.

Absolutely agree with post #30:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=64910&page=2&p=1088190&viewfull=1#post1088190
+ what countless many have said about the lack of features and gameplay in the general and gamma forums
 
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