You know lately i've been thinking - planetary landings would be nice, but its going to be a lot of work to incorporate planetary landings into the game in the complexity that is worthy of Elite. You need all these interiors need to be built, if it gets done half it will end up like X4 the game. So yeah I think a paid expansion is justified and would be a cool feature to have, but there is so much stuff to add in space.
It would be cooler to have a larger variety of environments e.g. space stations battles, aliens and atmospheric flight rather than the need for landings and walking around. It would be nice to have better identification of systems rather than the same stations pasted over and over again.
I think its unfair to compare Elite with games that are not even out yet. NMS for one is not multiplayer, two its procedurally generated with no simulation of economics, powers and politics like Elite does. Planetary landings are the only thing that is really impressive about NMS, but for Elite to do that would be literally writing another game entire.
Companies should focus on doing something specific well, and not trying to do everything. Look at the SC FPS demo it was awful, it just looked like a boring bland unreal game, its obvious they should really focus on finishing the game first. I mean they have what a single player driven story campaign, a mmorpg, arena, star wars, star trek, fps game, with realistic physics, and fully explorable ships? How far along are they compared to Elite. Elite does a few things, and doesn't offer everything but the few thing it does it does incredibly well.
There is plenty elite does "standard" that is pretty ahead and "released" compared to all the other games. Its a 1:1 simulation of the universe, it is a pseudo MMORPG where players can have real effects on the simulated economy and politics, the universe is populated with believable NPCs.
I mean where in NMS or SC you can buy a interdictor and fly around a system in FTL scanning other players or other npcs, interdict them, when they escape you can scan their wake and follow them around the galaxy. Every signal is a random event. If you become wanted the police come after you, if you take too long with a illegal action the police come after you. And this is one of the few things that Elite comes as "standard".
So yeah more doesn't mean better. Also Elite will not stay at $60 forever, expansion bundle will probably come with a discount. FD employs 200 people, there has to be income from somewhere.
Also you can't bring EVE into the discussion which has not only have years of development, its fundamentally a point and click MMORPG with hotkeys, is entirely server run, has a subscription fee, does not include all the complexities of simulating 3d space and physics. You are not a pilot in EVE but rather a commander of a ship character with attributes no different than a mage with a specific build.
Elite is its own thing, and thats why I really dig it. I don't think it should do something just because everyone else is doing it.
