From what I 've read here I believe the ability to get up and leave your ship is in the offing at some point in the future.
Prior to ED being released a rival similar product introduced the ability to walk around stations as an expansion to what had been possible in previous games in the series. I think most fans of that series would agree it was a disaster (now gradually being fixed). The problem for that game was that each station interior was one of a small number of models and each station was populated by a small range of NPC characters - so you can fly half way across the galaxy to walk into an identical looking station to have an identical conversation with an NPC that looks identical to thousands of others. Interaction with those NPCs was then limited to a handful of brief scripted conversations and a simple mini-game.
Now I don't have a problem with the current limited number of station docking zone interiors in ED; the stations look terrific and taken with the range of outposts I'm happy. However unless FD put an enormous amount of effort into generating something that doesn't really seem central to an Elite game I worry that a first person experience out of the ships will necessarily be very limited and 'immersion breaking'. It's acceptable for one landing pad to look like another (even on a planet surface) but will walking down corridors identical to corridors lights years away and past people who seemingly have clones throughout the galaxy not be the ultimate immersion breaker? Perhaps FD are capable of producing station interiors and human models in a procedural manner to get the variation required to simulate a 'living, breaking universe' but it seems an epic undertaking to me.
There's also the question of what to do when you leave your spacecraft. If you can do everything you need to do from your spacecraft why bother leaving and therefore why bother tasking developers with working on such a peripheral aspect to the game? However if the player does need to leave their spacecraft to complete a task then there is the risk that process will become very tedious and repetitive slowing down the game. The rival product to ED implemented station walking as a required feature to play the game successfully and back-tracked rapidly in patches and revisions as players resented repeating out of ship tasks at each station they landed at.
I'm not saying that FD couldn't do an excellent job of implementing walking around stations. I'm just apprehensive that the scale of the task required to achieve that in a convincing, immersive way means that it could be a very long time before this feature would add to the quality of the game. This is time that could be spent on enhancing the core functionality of the game: better multiplayer, more varied missions etc., a wider rage of stations and outposts perhaps including some unique structures at key locations etc... We have to remember that FPS and PRG games are sophisticated undertakings in their own right.
So basically I'm worried that getting out of your spacecraft and walking around will necessarily expose the limitations of the simulation and actually be counter immersive.
Thoughts?
Prior to ED being released a rival similar product introduced the ability to walk around stations as an expansion to what had been possible in previous games in the series. I think most fans of that series would agree it was a disaster (now gradually being fixed). The problem for that game was that each station interior was one of a small number of models and each station was populated by a small range of NPC characters - so you can fly half way across the galaxy to walk into an identical looking station to have an identical conversation with an NPC that looks identical to thousands of others. Interaction with those NPCs was then limited to a handful of brief scripted conversations and a simple mini-game.
Now I don't have a problem with the current limited number of station docking zone interiors in ED; the stations look terrific and taken with the range of outposts I'm happy. However unless FD put an enormous amount of effort into generating something that doesn't really seem central to an Elite game I worry that a first person experience out of the ships will necessarily be very limited and 'immersion breaking'. It's acceptable for one landing pad to look like another (even on a planet surface) but will walking down corridors identical to corridors lights years away and past people who seemingly have clones throughout the galaxy not be the ultimate immersion breaker? Perhaps FD are capable of producing station interiors and human models in a procedural manner to get the variation required to simulate a 'living, breaking universe' but it seems an epic undertaking to me.
There's also the question of what to do when you leave your spacecraft. If you can do everything you need to do from your spacecraft why bother leaving and therefore why bother tasking developers with working on such a peripheral aspect to the game? However if the player does need to leave their spacecraft to complete a task then there is the risk that process will become very tedious and repetitive slowing down the game. The rival product to ED implemented station walking as a required feature to play the game successfully and back-tracked rapidly in patches and revisions as players resented repeating out of ship tasks at each station they landed at.
I'm not saying that FD couldn't do an excellent job of implementing walking around stations. I'm just apprehensive that the scale of the task required to achieve that in a convincing, immersive way means that it could be a very long time before this feature would add to the quality of the game. This is time that could be spent on enhancing the core functionality of the game: better multiplayer, more varied missions etc., a wider rage of stations and outposts perhaps including some unique structures at key locations etc... We have to remember that FPS and PRG games are sophisticated undertakings in their own right.
So basically I'm worried that getting out of your spacecraft and walking around will necessarily expose the limitations of the simulation and actually be counter immersive.
Thoughts?
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