The next big expansion. And other small stuff. What will it be?

[Ian Skippy]

I voted for first person interaction. It has always been my intention to buy every expansion, however, if it does turn out to be this feature, I might skip this one & buy the subsequent season! I didn't get Elite to do that..& pls just tell me there won't be a weird, creepy cmdr dancefloor, like a certain game that shall remain nameless!

That weirdly lo-fi 'techno' music on an almost deserted dancefloor has to be one of the most depressing sights in gaming history IMHO.

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Most likely : person interaction and walking around ships, stations and planets. Spacewalking.

And Update becaue i NEED it : adding being able to hire wingmen as escort on missions or just to tag along for protection/companionship


From my opinion you have to "separate" Atmospheric landing :

1. Gas Giant flying : Volumetric Procedural Clouds + Lightning + Atmosphere Entry + Scooping, because no ground to handle.
2. Atmospheric Landing on "simple" planets : No life, Planet surfaces similar to actual Horizons planets, Weather system, Erosion (to change terrain), Liquid (Methan ocean, Water, and so on) : more complex to develop
3. Atmospheric Landing on "complex planets : Life, Gameplay (hunting), Vegetation, Grass, and other complex system (VERY Late in Elite Roadmap) : Earth Like world, Aquatic World, Amonia World.

That is basically the plan. Since 2012/2013 it was base game -> non-atmo landing->EVA->Atmo.

 

[W4rSkuLL]

Most likely : person interaction and walking around ships, stations and planets. Spacewalking.

And Update becaue i NEED it : adding being able to hire wingmen as escort on missions or just to tag along for protection/companionship


From my opinion you have to "separate" Atmospheric landing :

1. Gas Giant flying : Volumetric Procedural Clouds + Lightning + Atmosphere Entry + Scooping, because no ground to handle.
2. Atmospheric Landing on "simple" planets : No life, Planet surfaces similar to actual Horizons planets, Weather system, Erosion (to change terrain), Liquid (Methan ocean, Water, and so on) : more complex to develop
3. Atmospheric Landing on "complex planets : Life, Gameplay (hunting), Vegetation, Grass, and other complex system (VERY Late in Elite Roadmap) : Earth Like world, Aquatic World, Amonia World.

Yes, there seem to be a lot of work with creating planets with atmospheres. Doing them 1 and 1 as updates may be more preferable than doing the lot in one expansion. Or maybe not. Although Frontier is probably working on something in the background as they do season pass 2. I guess it is first person interaction which will build upon commander creation and multi crew. Thus also laying the foundation to go out of your ship/SRV to create some sort of bases in season pass 4 or 5. Although this is speculations.

 

[Sterlino]

This game has an absolutely needs of gameplay mechanics.

they should come out with walking on your spaceship before anything else.
A thing to do it gradually : first simple walk in your ship , then on breathless planets, then (after some months) walk in spacestations (3.1, 3.2, 3.3).

landing on planets with atmosphere will not add anything of really interesting to the gameplay and the people will start to scream and shout for boredom.
And the risk is that after 3 years of lacking in gameplay, people will stop to play 'till forget the game in the drawer.

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

Atmospheric planets and gas giants with mostly barren worlds but rare cases of simple lifeforms.
Walking around ships would seem to be a logical step seeing as we're getting multicrew.
Cities.
Space whales!

 

[Strangepork]

With this I also hope they can implement a room/bar on stations where you can meet other commanders and maybe have data screens where you can buy commodities and take on missions.

Splendid idea CMDR, I'd be up for this too.

 

[Steve50]

My money is on first person walking around will be the next expansion (I refuse to use the term 'season' it's so American)

However.. personally I have little to no interest in walking around as I figure once you've done it a few times the novelty will wear off and you'll probably not bother again. so I would like to see landing on planets with atmosphere/flora & fauna. Something to attract the NMS fans

 

[clouddancer]

Thargoids

 

[Quester91]

Walk around ships and stations should be a priority after Horizons imo.
Everything else in that list can be added later.

 

[Doolittle]

I agree about ship names. It should be fairly easy to implement. I don´t understand why this isn´t introduced yet. Its just naming your ship. How hard can it be? Then people can actually make a clan tag to if they wish to show others they are in a clan/group/minor faction. I hope it will come in 2.1 Or at least this season.

I'm sure it will hit the store soon enough so they can charge you for such simplicity. Bobble heads, paint jobs, might as well charge for names.
Full planet landings. No gimmicks. Actual missions based outside a USS structured event. SC seems to be doing it correctly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1D4S-l5XDE

 

[Phantasma]

I'm pretty sure it will be legs.
It is one of the major mechanics that Star Citizen already has and Elite obviously lacks (personally i'm not a fan of direct comparisons between those two but no game exists in a vacuum and Frontier themselves seem to react to SC's development too. See: Arena).

I bought this game to do fun things in space ships, if i wanted a shooter or a so called walking simulator i'd already have plenty of other titles to choose from... but the demand is visibly there and could cater to the "there's nothing to do" and the "give me immersion" crowds at the same time.
It remains to be seen of one of those groups will end up disappointed. Because trudging through a station unto an NPC only to recieve the standard fetch quests with an added rep bar rise could turn out to be more tedious than game-changing.
Time will tell.

I'd really love to customize my cabin though.

 

[Huros]

Thargoids

Thargoids.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Because trudging through a station unto an NPC only to recieve the standard fetch quests with an added rep bar rise could turn out to be more tedious than game-changing.
Time will tell.

X:R did it. I liked it. Most hated it. So they added a menu interface where you could skip all the walking bits if you wanted, or you could walk around if immersion is your thing.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Spacelegs it will be for sure, possibly limited to the ships on initial release. A massive task to get right though given the nature of the game. FPS are ten a penny, but there's few that really nail the movement of the player and those around them. And most of those aren't in space with zero g.

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X:R did it. I liked it. Most hated it. So they added a menu interface where you could skip all the walking bits if you wanted, or you could walk around if immersion is your thing.

I want a ride on the space bus that's next to the landing pads in communist stations. If I can float it out into space, all the better! Brmmmmm!

 

[Henri]

Thargoids.

as they are part of the story AND in space even people with only the base game will get killed by them.
Thargoids will not be a paid expansion more like a patch released with an expansion to buff content.

 

[Ekar]

Im not too interested in walking around. I would love to see the galaxy fleshed out with high detail planets, diversely structured cities and stations, and lots more stellar stuff to gawk at.

Then i'd want to see it all hanging together. Moving populations and moving economies. Stations falling into disuse. People working together to terraform a planet.

 

[kepler84]

I think Atmospheric landings is the way to go.

First just on empty planets, and with inhabited planets (natural and urban) and gas planets (with floating outposts) coming during the season patches.

Looks like the obvious way to expand the game at this point...

 

[moonbucket]

I'd love the ability to craft or build a small orbital dock for our ships - a fancy hanger, in other words. With a choice of a few modules - say a repair module, refuelling and some shielding/defensive hardpoints.

 

[Barking_Mad]

From 2013:

Sandy: We will need some form of voice acting and Voice overs, especially from update 2 onwards (when interiors and first person is available). However there’s a nightmare brewing here about the quantity and variety needed. This is a pretty major design/code decision that will need an extended meeting.

 

[Quester91]

I can't understand people saying that they want atmospheric planets and fly throughable gas giants but they don't care about walking around.
What's the point of enlarging the galaxy more and more without going deep with the mechanics we already have?

Walking around would boost immersion, sense of scale and gameplay. Inspecting the cargo, walking through stations looking for wingmates, finding rare missions givers or something like that is absolutely necessary to build up every other expansion in the future upon it.
And fortunately mmo is the way FD is tending to take with coop centered weapons (Chargable shields for instance), individual and customizable faces for every cmdr and so on.

 

[Barking_Mad]

Yeah, and how can we go shopping to buy one of Sandro's shirts if we don't have spacelegs? [big grin]