The Planetary landing and planetside missions discussion Thread
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- mexican(mexico) nexus
Maybe we get to land on a planet made of rollercoasters.
People aren't so much asking for them, given that they're a stated future expansion of the game and therefore are certainly coming (Soon™). It's more that people are just impatient to see them.
That's because, despite the current emphasis in the game's development, a lot of people are attracted to the Elite franchise for reasons other than combat. While the original Elite was pretty much constant pew-pew with added buying and selling at stations, its sequels - Frontier: Elite II and First Encounters - introduced a lot more content, and impressed a lot of people at the time, by allowing direct access to the planets we'd only previously seen as distant circles.
The meat of Elite (pardon me) wasn't planetary landings, because they weren't a feature, and nobody in 1984 thought "this'd be so much better if I could fly down there and weave through mountain ranges". It would've been a ridiculous pipe-dream at the time. So there was no reason to be dissatisfied with what was, then, a cutting-edge, paradigm-changing game. The problem is that from here in 2015, both FE2 and FFE are visible there in the past, along with a lot of other games that have built on Elite's foundation in various ways. So it's harder for us, from our vantage point here in the future, to appreciate what Elite was back then. I was playing Elite in the late 80s, so I do realise how engaging it was for a time - but even I'm able to see that much of my current admiration for it is based on nostalgia. Yes, it was a good game for its day - but compared to what we've seen since, its own sequels included, it looks very basic indeed.
Which is why I find it disappointing that Dangerous proved to be a remake of Elite, rather than the sequel to First Encounters that I'd hoped Elite 4 would be. Dangerous is a good game: it's graphically immersive, the audio is wonderful, and I love the 'feel' of the ships even though the actual flight model frustrates me with its limited top speed and aeroplane controls. But while Dangerous is good, it's incomplete, and it'll remain incomplete as long as it lacks in 7 gigabytes what FFE included on one CD (to say nothing of the one 3.5" floppy that FE2 fitted its seamless planetary landings on).
A lot of people will argue this is down to player preference, and of course it is. I'm a simulation fan, so your talk of 'boss fights' makes me shudder. I'm focused on the sim parts of FFE: Newtonian physics, seamless landings, the ability to explore properly - even if that only means watching a sunset over a planet that may have had no human visitors before. Exploration in Dangerous is a box-ticking exercise viewed as a way to make money. That's what puts me off it. Because as an explorer I don't particular care whether I'm making money or not: I want to explore because I want to see things; discover things. And I'm sure I'm not alone.
Combat has had a lot of attention so far. It may not be as the combat enthusiasts want it; it may not hold up well against other space fighty games - I'm no expert there. But at least combat is there, and is a central part of the game, 'boss fights' or not. Exploration - in the true sense - isn't there at all yet. So yes, there are Elite fans who'd like to see Dangerous expand out to become something approaching what its predecessors were, even if we have to live with the compromises made for the sake of multiplayer and accessibility. I am willing to live with those - but the moment I find that Dangerous is dropping planetary landings, that's the moment I will, indeed, go play a different game. Because at that point I'll know that it's never going to be anything more than an arcade shoot-em-up, albeit a very pretty one.
Whilst it may hurt our sensibilities, we are actually lucky that they started on E: D first. It would probably have made more financial sense to start with Planet Coaster - there appears to be a larger market for it. It can probably be the cash cow (cash dinosaur, perhaps) that allows FD to spend more money on E: D than it might 'deserve' on its own right.
Wading into the discussion ...
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Firstly, those that want PL for the interaction with other players. I don't know about you but I can go days without seeing another real commander. Space is BIG, unless players are concentrated on only half a dozen planets, you will only be interacting with bots (NPC's to be precise).
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Next, some in this thread have stated, either with knowledge or assuming, that the expansion module for PL will be similar to a new game. Good, but how will we, as players transition from one game to another? Will it be seamless, just like FSDíng to another system now, or will the player have to dock at a station first before entering the atmosphere?
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Okay we get PL, what do we actually do? Flying around a planet might be okay for the first few times but planets are BIG and we won't be able to do the speeds we do in space. Fancy flying around the equator, will it will take a couple of hours. Yes, it might be nice if players could construct their own bases (SIMS anyone?) but then what. If you stick to 'your' base, you are effectively restricting yourself to that few systems around you. And you can't leave in case someone , whether it be a NPC or player, finds your base and decides to either take it for themselves or destroy it..
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I can see why so many want PL but I wonder if they have thought it through and thought about what they are actually going to do after the initial gee wiz has worn off?
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Firstly, those that want PL for the interaction with other players. I don't know about you but I can go days without seeing another real commander. Space is BIG, unless players are concentrated on only half a dozen planets, you will only be interacting with bots (NPC's to be precise).
.
Next, some in this thread have stated, either with knowledge or assuming, that the expansion module for PL will be similar to a new game. Good, but how will we, as players transition from one game to another? Will it be seamless, just like FSDíng to another system now, or will the player have to dock at a station first before entering the atmosphere?
.
Okay we get PL, what do we actually do? Flying around a planet might be okay for the first few times but planets are BIG and we won't be able to do the speeds we do in space. Fancy flying around the equator, will it will take a couple of hours. Yes, it might be nice if players could construct their own bases (SIMS anyone?) but then what. If you stick to 'your' base, you are effectively restricting yourself to that few systems around you. And you can't leave in case someone , whether it be a NPC or player, finds your base and decides to either take it for themselves or destroy it..
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I can see why so many want PL but I wonder if they have thought it through and thought about what they are actually going to do after the initial gee wiz has worn off?
I don't think it's that simple.
Planetary landings is a paid for expansion therefore it's revenue generating. I'm not sure releasing planetary landings therefore means less content.
It will also likely enable the larger ships so again it's a content enabler, not a disabler as you say.
For me I can't wait for planetary landings, I keep delaying going exploring hoping they're just round the corner!
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1: it was in Frontier and FFE so why not now?
2: I and others have already paid for it, do we get a refund?
I think you're the one who wants to go play another game since the things you are suggesting are more of an arena space shooter kind of thing, not Elite.
During the kickstarter, the #1 feature requested was Seamless Planetary Landings. If Frontier had said at that time, there would be no landing on planets in any shape or form, I really do think the kickstarter would have failed and we would not be talking about this game now.
And to those who say planetary landings won't add anything, it'll just be another place that has nothing to add ... you've missed the point of this game ... 100cr, a Sidewinder, do what you want ... the "do what you want" bit does not mean "we give you things to do", it means "you have the freedom to think of things to do". The Buckyball Run is a perfect example of this, it's not content in the game, it's not something the game says "Hey, you can do this" ... Buckyball Run is something someone one day went "Hey, what if we did this?". Imaginative thinking seems to be lost in today's games players.
And to those who say planetary landings won't add anything, it'll just be another place that has nothing to add ... you've missed the point of this game ... 100cr, a Sidewinder, do what you want ... the "do what you want" bit does not mean "we give you things to do", it means "you have the freedom to think of things to do". The Buckyball Run is a perfect example of this, it's not content in the game, it's not something the game says "Hey, you can do this" ... Buckyball Run is something someone one day went "Hey, what if we did this?". Imaginative thinking seems to be lost in today's games players.
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hu? how did you already payed for it? did you put money in a jar or something?
if you are talking about the backing, then all we paid for was future expansions, no one said anything about what they would contain.
Thank god that you are not lead game designer in FD.
Because of the choices FD have made in the flight model for Dangerous, I don't see how it can be seamless as it was in FE2/FFE.
I believe the escape speed for Earth is somewhere around the 7 km/s mark - that's the speed above which you can create an open orbit, one that doesn't ultimately return to Earth.
In Dangerous, we can achieve a maximum speed without supercruise of around 3-500 m/s. And our minimum speed with supercruise is 30 km/s. That leaves us a great swathe of inaccessible speeds between the two limits, and Earth's escape speed, and its standard low orbit speed range, are well within that band of inaccessibility. That means the game's going to have to have some sort of seam' between the way we fly in space and the way we fly over planet surfaces and within atmosphere.
Which is a shame, but there you go.
There has been no concrete confirmation but it has been heavily implied
http://us2.campaign-archive.com/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=ac1081437f#launch and beyond
However I completely agree nobody should expect anything
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There was a kickstarter option (which I think was still available into the beta) to buy a lifetime expansion pass. So I have already paid for every expansion FD deliver. Whether that is 0 or 10.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
That's a very good point. It'll be interesting to see how the developers will tackle this problem.
kreuzbichler
Banned
a core aspect is something that is in a game at launch, not eventually tacked on years afterwards
look at the No Maid´s Sky videos, they are full of planetary footage.
Elite is too graphically intense to make it happen, NMS is completely seamless due to less intense graphics and every bit is procedural and non-instanced.
In Elite we travel from instance to hyperspace loading screen to instance, to another instance
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The only issue is resources.
It will take a massive effort to implement planetary landings in any form that would be worth having, and this would very likely sideline the possibilities of fixing and developing the actual game of Elite.
We are just talking priorities.
But there has to be some sort of transition. Supercruise is a completely different form of travel to normal travel - you are faffing about with space-time, some what like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
So they might just do a supercruise exit-like thing, which lasts a bit longer and has you in red glow slow down mode before you can take over flight. Some has suggested that you will dock in orbit and fly a shuttle down, though that does not seem to solve that immediate problem.
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Not really. Well, only sort of. See my post, above. There is a separate 'additional' team for the expansions.