What the developers have to say:
Why Early Access?
“Elite Dangerous: Horizons is the second season of content for Elite Dangerous and begins with the release of the epic Planetary Landings expansion.
It fulfills a lifelong ambition to journey seamlessly from space to explore the surfaces of accurately simulated 1:1 scale planets and moons throughout Elite Dangerous’ multi-player, cut-throat, full scale re-creation of the 34th century Milky Way galaxy.
We’re an independent development team and Elite Dangerous is our first big self-published game after several hit games done as work-for hire projects.
All our releases go through a closed beta phase before public release, and after every Elite Dangerous public release we listen attentively and react quickly to all feedback, rapidly iterating builds where necessary.
We think Horizons is unprecedented – its already a vast new gameplay experience even by Elite Dangerous standards, and there are still other major expansions to come as part of the season. Its an absolutely pivotal step along our incredibly ambitious longer term roadmap.
We believe we have something special on our hands here, and we want as much scrutiny and feedback as possible now to help us deliver the final level polish and balancing.
We can’t wait to hear what you think!”
Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“The exact date for coming out of Early Access will depend on feedback but we estimate sometime in the first quarter of 2016.”
[Note: hit that target early then]
How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“The full version will incorporate feedback from the wide community and further improve polish, balancing and optimization.
Plus of course the further expansions in the Elite Dangerous: Horizons season will follow at no additional cost to Horizons players.”
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“We’ve completed a successful closed Beta test.
The enthusiastic efforts of thousands of Elite Dangerous community members have helped get us to a point where all systems are feature complete and have had a first level of polish and balance.
We are now ready for the scrutiny and feedback of orders of magnitude more people.”
Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“No. There is a discount available to existing Elite Dangerous players.”
[Note: *cough*]
How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“We’re experienced in dealing with our highly engaged community on our own forums in beta phases. You’ll interact directly with our dev and QA teams.
Bug Reports / Feedback:
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=105
Discussion:
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=30
We manage the forum threads to make sure the current list of known issues is clear, as well as providing rapid build iteration, full feedback on the status of our development and regular email newsletters.
Our forums are also a very active place generally; you’ll find lots of people willing to discuss all things Elite Dangerous.
We try to be pro-active and look out for comments/discussions we can help with on the Steam forums,
Reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/
Twitter:
@Frontier_Help for support
@elitedangerous for the game
@frontierdev for us generally
and Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/EliteDangerousOfficial/
But if you just want to enjoy the experience, that’s fine too.”