Landing on a planet

[Ruskodisco]

Actually its a matter of benefit vs. costs, and in the case of "walking on planets or flying over planets surface" I would say the costs (of development) are tremendous and the benefit (over time) tends to zero. Yes the benefit is a matter of taste, but over time, it will tend to some individual zero line. There are ideas here in this board which are the other way round, high benefit with low costs. These should be adressed first. I can not tell any, because there will always be argues about how easy it is to code this and that, thats not our business, FD can decide this better than we.
Therefor I do not support the idea of planet surface whatever.

+1 for the OP

Rex Kraemer

may i ask what are these ideas with high reward and low risk?

 

[elayeth]

Trolling through the forum this morning a read several posts about having the ability to land on planets (and the dire consequences that will happen if FD doesn't implement this straight away!)

It got me thinking - why would you want to land or even cruise around a planet?

ED is a space sim, first and foremost right? For FD tried to implement landing on planets they would have to create millions (if not billions) of different planet surfaces as each planet would have to be different. Cities would have to be rendered and each city, each structure would have to be different otherwise there would be a backlash of people complaining that the city on planet X was the same as the one on planet Y and that just isn't damn well acceptable!

And what benefit would it bring, apart from the ability to fly over landscape? None really unless players want to build their own cities and act like some demi-god over the inhabitants.

The effort involved for FD to implement this would be staggering, let ED stay a space sim. We already have a Sid Meyers Civilisation module implemented in Power Play, do we really need anything more?

The only out of ship experience I would like to see (and this is a not a request, just a 'wouldn't it be nice') is the ability to walk around my ship in the hangar and maybe have a common room/bar on each station where you can meet up with fellow commanders and maybe chat away. But even that would be difficult as how would you display each commander, would there be a generic model, could you create your own image?

Please FD, concentrate on what made Elite so good and resist the urge to try to be all things for all people, you will never win that race.

I agree with every word here. People demand landing on planets but at what price? There are so many other cool stuff to implement....

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but OP just make sure you remember your post; because two things are going to happen either there will be planetary landings or ED will fall and people will move on to better space flight games(im not saying ED is a bad game, im saying that competition will create a better game)

Better and more accurate milky way?
See... speak for yourself because people look for different things in games...

 

[Oddball]

why would you want to land or even cruise around a planet?[/B][/COLOR]

ED is a space sim, first and foremost right? For FD tried to implement landing on planets they would have to create millions (if not billions) of different planet surfaces as each planet would have to be different. Cities would have to be rendered and each city, each structure would have to be different otherwise there would be a backlash of people complaining that the city on planet X was the same as the one on planet Y and that just isn't damn well acceptable!

And what benefit would it bring, apart from the ability to fly over landscape? None really unless players want to build their own cities and act like some demi-god over the inhabitants.


The only out of ship experience I would like to see (and this is a not a request, just a 'wouldn't it be nice') is the ability to walk around my ship in the hangar and maybe have a common room/bar on each station where you can meet up with fellow commanders and maybe chat away. But even that would be difficult as how would you display each commander, would there be a generic model, could you create your own image?

Please FD, concentrate on what made Elite so good and resist the urge to try to be all things for all people, you will never win that race.

Do your research. Landing on planets will be implemented. It has been promised by FD and I have already paid extra money for the expansion when it eventually arrives.
Then again, we were promised a single player off line version of the game and looked what happened to that. (Yes FD, I will always remind you of this).

 

[kreuzbichler]

It has been promised by FD and I have already paid extra money for the expansion when it eventually arrives.
Then again, we were promised a single player off line version of the game and looked what happened to that.

true story bro, true story :-/

 

[RexKraemer]

may i ask what are these ideas with high reward and low risk?

High benefit with low cost!

Example:
Money transfer player to player would be easy to implement and would give us large benefit (in the sense of multiplayer interacting). To clarify the wording, large benefit but maybe also high risk for abuse.

So, concentrating on high benefit with low cost does NOT imply low risk. "risk" is another dimension. But never concentrate on high costs with low benefit, you win nothing and the risk maybe still high!

Rex Kraemer

 

[Elgered]

hehe, I like the question.
I quit playing Star Trek Online, because of the ground-missions
I didn't like planetary exploration in Mass Effect,...

But well, I guess I have the answer to "WHY ?":

We want to have all main aspects of all great games in E : D. That includes (but is not limited to): Elite, Pirates!, Sim City, Wolfenstein 3D, Railroad (or Rollercoaster) Tycoon, Civilization, Tetris, ...

FD lives from selling more and more copies of the game. So they need to make it interesting for more and more players...

 

[Sysmon]

Guys, you're going to love this. I must be going mental, because I thought I just saw someone ask why anyone would want to land on a planet.

I know right! I really must cut down on this forum business. I'm starting to see zany things.

Yeah who'd want to do that?? It'd be like visiting the Sol system in-game. Who cares about Earth? We are there in RL so why should it be in the game??

Oh wait, that was actually one of the coolest features of Frontier and FFE. Never mind! Let's go land places. Sit on the beaches. Meet the locals. Have them take us to their lizards.

S

 

[Ruskodisco]

High benefit with low cost!

Example:
Money transfer player to player would be easy to implement and would give us large benefit (in the sense of multiplayer interacting). To clarify the wording, large benefit but maybe also high risk for abuse.

So, concentrating on high benefit with low cost does NOT imply low risk. "risk" is another dimension. But never concentrate on high costs with low benefit, you win nothing and the risk maybe still high!

Rex Kraemer

you do know that people will be farming credits if that would be the case?
cause then you can just sell credits for real money.

 

[Schmack]

you do know that people will be farming credits if that would be the case?
cause then you can just sell credits for real money.

You can anyhow, it's just harder now than it was oh.. a month ago. You can always drop anything you buy in space and anyone can pick it up. Sure it's stolen but black markets don't care. Do that close to a black market outpost (like right next to it) and you can move a lot of Cr pretty fast. Probably untraceable as well.

 

[kilvenny]

For me landing on planets is all about the extra variety it can bring and the planets move from being a back drop to being part of the game. What is down there, what does it look like? Potential for air to ground targets and new places to land. Some planets will be populated so there will be life in the galaxy.

 

[Patrick_68000]

The planets are one of the main components of the galaxy. Ignoring them would be a heresy

 

[Tinman]

Do your research. Landing on planets will be implemented. It has been promised by FD and I have already paid extra money for the expansion when it eventually arrives.
Then again, we were promised a single player off line version of the game and looked what happened to that. (Yes FD, I will always remind you of this).

The difference being that planetary landings was always part of the original plan in the form of expansions and offline mode wasn't even mentioned as an alternative during the Kickstarter until people started to ask for it, AKA not part of the original plan.

 

[Chevy66]

I didn't like planetary exploration in Mass Effect,...

Isn't pretty much the whole game planetary exploration?

 

[Hurricane Moon]

Guys i love elite to bits....

but im bored of not being able to land on planets and other cool stuff.

keep seeing evochron mercenary banded about,so i watched a vid on yt and with the latest version and mods it doesnt look a bad game at all.

and you can soar through a planets atmosphere and go down to the surface.
....also build ships and space stations?



so just come home from lunch break....downloaded latest version.....ahem..found a key gen for it lol.


will be testing this one out tonight,if it grabs me then i wont bother with elite until we can actually get out of the same a to b gameplay

 

[dtrulez]

I wouldn't even dare to think why would someone wanna play a space sim and ignore planet landings...

Anyway, what I am afraid of, is that landing on planets, to make it look realistic and all is not an expansion, it is an entire new game and I really doubt we will see it anytime soon, if ever.

I am not some die hard ED fan, so I don't really care for the game as it is now, nor I am sympathizing the devs or anything, I paid the purchase price and I don't like it as it is now, so if planetary landings shows up I will buy it, either case I will move on to No man's sky. I just hope when planetary landings expansion launches, there will still be someone to play the game.

 

[Hurricane Moon]

I wouldn't even dare to think why would someone wanna play a space sim and ignore planet landings...

Anyway, what I am afraid of, is that landing on planets, to make it look realistic and all is not an expansion, it is an entire new game and I really doubt we will see it anytime soon, if ever.

I am not some die hard ED fan, so I don't really care for the game as it is now, nor I am sympathizing the devs or anything, I paid the purchase price and I don't like it as it is now, so if planetary landings shows up I will buy it, either case I will move on to No man's sky. I just hope when planetary landings expansion launches, there will still be someone to play the game.

is NMS coming to pc then dude? i thought it was ps4?

 

[dtrulez]

is NMS coming to pc then dude? i thought it was ps4?

It's PS4 timed exclusive, so it will come to PC some time after PS4 launch. Anyway, if it's good enough... ps4 isn't tha exspensive

 

[BIGPUNGED2000]

just remember the a other space game is going to do landing on a planet. if elite wont do it then people will leave to the other and frontier will loose money. second if they gave the player this option its ok if you dont want it but it will be there.

 

[Hurricane Moon]

It's PS4 timed exclusive, so it will come to PC some time after PS4 launch. Anyway, if it's good enough... ps4 isn't tha exspensive

lol i have owned 2 of them and a xbox one.....sold both of the sheep money making machines a while back.......only bought the 2nd ps4 because i didnt think pc was getting wwe 2k15....and low and behold it came out a month or 2 ago.

will deffo check out NMS on the pc when it hits.

 

[kapparomeo]

A shame FD wasted time on PP instead of some decent content ...

Why complain to FD and not to all the forumites who endlessly bellyached about having nothing to do once they'd bought their Anaconda?

This is the problem at planetary landings cannot solve. Planetary Landings are ultimately only a cosmetic change - it's just a change of backdrop out of your canopy from star-field to cloudy sky. I've seen variations on "it'll be cool to fly through canyons" many times on these threads, but five minutes of that and you'd be back to moaning about having nothing to do again. It's only aggravating the "mile-wide but inch-deep" criticism that people have levied at Elite in the past.

Planetary Landings are a complete waste of time, effort and money, which FD does not have in great quantities. FD should be focusing its resources on actual constructive content - filling the ship roster, diversifying the mission types, refining the economy. This is what players actually DO in Elite, those are the meaningful changes to make that affect the substance of the game. Flying around a mountain or flying around an asteroid ultimately aren't all that different. Planetary Landings are barking up the wrong tree and the enthusiasm for them is misguided, and it could well kill the game you're trying to save.