Worried about 3.0 season/expansion

[Rudolphus]

I have a lifetime pass so I can wait and see wat Elite become.
I wait that elite will come with a expansion for explorers, scientific ships and srv's repair ships with Eva

but maybe Hellion will fill this gap it looks like it can become a good game so they deserved support and will see wat it becomes
meantime I divide my time now in Elite, Hellion and soon mass effect andromeda

 

[Mengy]

People who say there is no gameplay with "space legs" have no clue what is up... There is a massive amount of gameplay options that could be used in game.

Keep this very important distinction in mind though: gameplay potential does not equal actual implemented gameplay.

You only need look at planetary landings to see a great example of that. Surface landings could allow huge amounts of deep space exploration possibilities, for example: natural random deep space surface POI's like geological formations and meteorites which could be scanned for exploration data and materials. Planet landings also allow the avenue to enhance our ship's surface scanners to provide "heat maps" of planet surfaces, highlighting search areas where things can be found, stuff like geysers, fumeroles, barnacles, alien ruins, abandoned bases, crashed ships, caves, etc. Planet landings also make surface mining a possibility, allowing a new SRV to be implemented which can be used to track down surface ore deposits which could be mined to either sell or fulfill mining missions.

All of this was potentially opened up when Horizons launched, yet here we are a year and a half later and none of it has even been touched upon. We have new combat mechanics for planet surfaces but nothing for exploration or mining. Lots of potential game mechanics improvements, very little of it realized.

Take Multicrew for example. There is so much potential gameplay that is possible with multicrew. Traders could have a co-pilot who could search for prime selling locations for goods on board via new trading tools and mechanics. Combat crews could man several SRV's and even an SLF while the ship owner flies the ship in cooperative ground base assaults. Explorers could have crews which could utilize 360° scanners to scan objects all around the ship, and also manage star routes while searching the galaxy map (in flight) for any interesting nearby systems or phenomena. Explorer crews could even launch an exploration SLF capable of supercruise flight only to allow multicrew ships to fully scan and explore systems faster in tandem. Not to mention the immense potential of NPC crews which multicrew opens up!

Multicrew has so much potential, yet all we are getting is a gunner station and SLF's, nothing else at all.

Potential of mechanics does not equal implemented mechanics.

Space legs, if ever implemented, will most likely follow the same low bar of development at the start. Meaning sure we'll be able to walk around and get out of our pilot seats, but for years afterwards there just won't be much to do with it. Expect an empty new initial mechanic for marketing purposes mainly, without much actual gameplay. Most likely we'll first get space animals to hunt for with weapons you can buy from the Frontier store, maybe even some human or alien wars with missions where we can assault armies ala CoD style or something, because FRack Yeah COmbat!!!! But other than that, while space legs could allow "massive amount of gameplay options", don't expect much near the initial implementation. Realistically, and taking Frontier's development history into account, it just won't happen that way.

So ask yourself, how exciting would space legs be without much actual gameplay to go with it? Still want a whole season devoted to it, or are there more important things to develop first?

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

3.x-4.0 will have that but i was rerfering on planets i admit that part i was wrong! but what is trading and smuggling in ED, just words on mission bord while SC 3.0 will have deeper interaction in game(fps,nice looking planets...etc) even i don't see it coming this year.
i don't care when will SC be released and it's funny how ppl here react on mentioning SC, why didn't you react on mass effect? so your hate exist!
Elite has beautiful sceleton but missing everything else and path we see and speed (cos devs are focuse on cosmetics and console ports=Money) these two games are in same troubles

Maybe SC will be all that you say but until its out it is all hopes and dreams and conjecture. Hell i hooe you are right as i am a backer too, but right now (btw i am critical of ED too) but right now you have a hypothetical product against one that is out.

Its a bit like if we were saying how rubbish xrebirth was when that came out and using the ED DDF to compare.... And look what happened with the DDF

 

[Ian Skippy]

3.x-4.0 will have that but i was rerfering on planets i admit that part i was wrong! but what is trading and smuggling in ED, just words on mission bord while SC 3.0 will have deeper interaction in game(fps,nice looking planets...etc) even i don't see it coming this year.
i don't care when will SC be released and it's funny how ppl here react on mentioning SC, why didn't you react on mass effect? so your hate exist!
Elite has beautiful sceleton but missing everything else and path we see and speed (cos devs are focuse on cosmetics and console ports=Money) these two games are in same troubles

I dont comment on ME because I will play it first this months, no reason to start guessing. As for how deep trading will be: therr is currently nothing to indicate it. There is no bgs, no markets, no cargo mechanic, nothing. So far nothing they did in actual coding is deep in any way. Until 4.0 there wont even be a second system, so forget about deep trading, beatiful planets and all that. 4.0 wont arrive before 2019 at best.

Will it be great if it turns out fantastically well? Sure. But you're just hoping awesome stuff will happen in the very distant future, when CIG already stated they no longer have the funding unless SQ42 sells well.

So lets forget about SC. ME looks like fun, I played the trilogy a stupid number of times and look forward to the new one. NMS seems to actually go somewhere too and ED is doing great. All good news for us. Dont care much for I: but thats a totalky different kind of game.

So lets focus on stuff that actually is happening.

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe SC will be all that you say but until its out it is all hopes and dreams and conjecture. Hell i hooe you are right as i am a backer too, but right now (btw i am critical of ED too) but right now you have a hypothetical product against one that is out.

Its a bit like if we were saying how rubbish xrebirth was when that came out and using the ED DDF to compare.... And look what happened with the DDF

And the DDF isnt even close to their levels of theorycrafting...

By now we should be better armed against baseless hype one should hope...

 

[Scruffman]

Dual Universe looks pretty interesting. Combines some of the best aspects of Elite & Star Citizen with survival-type games. It's on my "to watch" list.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Keep this very important distinction in mind though: gameplay potential does not equal actual implemented gameplay.

You only need look at planetary landings to see a great example of that. Surface landings could allow huge amounts of deep space exploration possibilities, for example: natural random deep space surface POI's like geological formations and meteorites which could be scanned for exploration data and materials. Planet landings also allow the avenue to enhance our ship's surface scanners to provide "heat maps" of planet surfaces, highlighting search areas where things can be found, stuff like geysers, fumeroles, barnacles, alien ruins, abandoned bases, crashed ships, caves, etc. Planet landings also make surface mining a possibility, allowing a new SRV to be implemented which can be used to track down surface ore deposits which could be mined to either sell or fulfill mining missions.

All of this was potentially opened up when Horizons launched, yet here we are a year and a half later and none of it has even been touched upon. We have new combat mechanics for planet surfaces but nothing for exploration or mining. Lots of potential game mechanics improvements, very little of it realized.

Take Multicrew for example. There is so much potential gameplay that is possible with multicrew. Traders could have a co-pilot who could search for prime selling locations for goods on board via new trading tools and mechanics. Combat crews could man several SRV's and even an SLF while the ship owner flies the ship in cooperative ground base assaults. Explorers could have crews which could utilize 360° scanners to scan objects all around the ship, and also manage star routes while searching the galaxy map (in flight) for any interesting nearby systems or phenomena. Explorer crews could even launch an exploration SLF capable of supercruise flight only to allow multicrew ships to fully scan and explore systems faster in tandem. Not to mention the immense potential of NPC crews which multicrew opens up!

Multicrew has so much potential, yet all we are getting is a gunner station and SLF's, nothing else at all.

Potential of mechanics does not equal implemented mechanics.

Space legs, if ever implemented, will most likely follow the same low bar of development at the start. Meaning sure we'll be able to walk around and get out of our pilot seats, but for years afterwards there just won't be much to do with it. Expect an empty new initial mechanic for marketing purposes mainly, without much actual gameplay. Most likely we'll first get space animals to hunt for with weapons you can buy from the Frontier store, maybe even some human or alien wars with missions where we can assault armies ala CoD style or something, because FRack Yeah COmbat!!!! But other than that, while space legs could allow "massive amount of gameplay options", don't expect much near the initial implementation. Realistically, and taking Frontier's development history into account, it just won't happen that way.

So ask yourself, how exciting would space legs be without much actual gameplay to go with it? Still want a whole season devoted to it, or are there more important things to develop first?

If your argument is that spacelegs will take time to flesh out, then yeah: we should definitely start on it ASAP in that case.

 

[Kayweg]

Keep this very important distinction in mind though: gameplay potential does not equal actual implemented gameplay.

You only need look at planetary landings to see a great example of that. Surface landings could allow huge amounts of deep space exploration possibilities, for example: natural random deep space surface POI's like geological formations and meteorites which could be scanned for exploration data and materials. Planet landings also allow the avenue to enhance our ship's surface scanners to provide "heat maps" of planet surfaces, highlighting search areas where things can be found, stuff like geysers, fumeroles, barnacles, alien ruins, abandoned bases, crashed ships, caves, etc. Planet landings also make surface mining a possibility, allowing a new SRV to be implemented which can be used to track down surface ore deposits which could be mined to either sell or fulfill mining missions.

All of this was potentially opened up when Horizons launched, yet here we are a year and a half later and none of it has even been touched upon. We have new combat mechanics for planet surfaces but nothing for exploration or mining. Lots of potential game mechanics improvements, very little of it realized.

Take Multicrew for example. There is so much potential gameplay that is possible with multicrew. Traders could have a co-pilot who could search for prime selling locations for goods on board via new trading tools and mechanics. Combat crews could man several SRV's and even an SLF while the ship owner flies the ship in cooperative ground base assaults. Explorers could have crews which could utilize 360° scanners to scan objects all around the ship, and also manage star routes while searching the galaxy map (in flight) for any interesting nearby systems or phenomena. Explorer crews could even launch an exploration SLF capable of supercruise flight only to allow multicrew ships to fully scan and explore systems faster in tandem. Not to mention the immense potential of NPC crews which multicrew opens up!

Multicrew has so much potential, yet all we are getting is a gunner station and SLF's, nothing else at all.

Potential of mechanics does not equal implemented mechanics.

Space legs, if ever implemented, will most likely follow the same low bar of development at the start. Meaning sure we'll be able to walk around and get out of our pilot seats, but for years afterwards there just won't be much to do with it. Expect an empty new initial mechanic for marketing purposes mainly, without much actual gameplay. Most likely we'll first get space animals to hunt for with weapons you can buy from the Frontier store, maybe even some human or alien wars with missions where we can assault armies ala CoD style or something, because FRack Yeah COmbat!!!! But other than that, while space legs could allow "massive amount of gameplay options", don't expect much near the initial implementation. Realistically, and taking Frontier's development history into account, it just won't happen that way.

So ask yourself, how exciting would space legs be without much actual gameplay to go with it? Still want a whole season devoted to it, or are there more important things to develop first?

Very much this.
While potential obviously is a good thing, i have become somewhat fatigued by the term. In general i mean, not just in connection with ED.
Potential which isn't being exploited and fulfilled is about as useful as no potential at all.
ED features a good number of things with potential (i.e. planetary landings, exploration, power play, DM style narrative/story telling).
I believe the game could benefit from more of these items to be fleshed out and expanded upon, rather than adding more "potentially" great features.
I understand the long term nature of FD's development strategy, but at some point you also need to gradually start finalizing features.
If not, you're potentially loosing the interest of some of your customers....because they may start to think that some of those first iterations actually end up being final iterations, and never be improved upon.
And that's a disheartening thought.

 

[Steve50]

it's a whole different experience to walk in first person rather than being stuck in a chair.

Yeah, fun for about an hour and then the novelty wears off and you'll never leave the ship again.. worth months of developer time? I think not.
I believe the people who so badly want us to walk around are the same people who want ED to have a pointless pewpew FPS part of the game.. hell no!

 

[IamMe]

Maybe SC will be all that you say but until its out it is all hopes and dreams and conjecture. Hell i hooe you are right as i am a backer too, but right now (btw i am critical of ED too) but right now you have a hypothetical product against one that is out.

Its a bit like if we were saying how rubbish xrebirth was when that came out and using the ED DDF to compare.... And look what happened with the DDF

it wasn't my intention to derail thread toward SC as i mentioned above instead i stated that few planets will have more to explore in other games than billions of planets in ED, for me both games are in similar state (deep in development) and with different features availabe (ED is more playable).
It's devs product and their decision and i hope they will bring something meaningfull soon, until then my wallet is closed even me as a single buyer i'm not important.
Every person here would like to see diff things, mine are atmo planets currently so i'll wait for that or something what will give ED depth.
cheers!

 

[CMDR Gizmo]

Keep this very important distinction in mind though: gameplay potential does not equal actual implemented gameplay.

Exactly, ED galaxy is 60k ly wide but only an inch deep, unfortunately.. I'll love it, but still there is so much more potential in all of its current aspects..

If your argument is that spacelegs will take time to flesh out, then yeah: we should definitely start on it ASAP in that case.

To then have another half-baked thing that steals time from main gameplay improvements? Nah, first flesh out the main one much more, there is just yet no need to compete with FPS and whatever..

 

[newman1702]

On a more pos note, that may be a verrry good thing. Time to enhance what already is for core gameplay and squash most bugs could be in que.

Polishing and fixing what is already there is not an expansion, what you're describing is called a patch. I guess we'll have to wait and see what s3 is going to be about, personally I think they're overdoing the secrecy a bit; I know they don't want to overpromise and underdeliver, but I see no reason why we shouldn't know at least roughly what just the next season will entail.

 

[Lightspeed]

I am pretty certain I remember a David Braben video somewhere that talked about the stages we would go through:

landing on airless planets with volcanic activity;
other airless planets with atmosphere;
gas giants (what would you do in a gas giant atmosphere?)
finally ... activity on planets with air.

There was never any talk about walking around, as far as I can remember. The emphasis has always been on in-ship activities (edit - and SRV activities)

So we haven't even started with the first on the list, yet.

 

[Iskariot]

In today's pax streaming, for the first time, Sandy convinced me that space legs are not "end of the year" away (aka 3.0), but "not next season" away.

Since i'm pretty sure that atmospheric landings are "not next season" away too, i'm now quite worried about what 3.0 season/expansion will be about.

I'm beginning to think that was right who thought that 3.0 will be about aliens/targhoids, but i doubt that could bring enough content to fill a season/expansion, and that may lead to a "filler" season (not saying i wouldn't like alien content).
Thinking harder about it though, putting aliens behind a paywall could bring very iffy situations... so, i don't know, hope they won't do that (and i'm saying this as a lifetimer).

For the moment i just hope it won't last two years like Horizons will, because i'm really looking forward to walking around ships and stations, or landing on planets with athmosphere...

I am not worried.
Not because I don't want walking around, but because to me it is not at all as important as:
- a fleshed out bounty hunting/piracy system for example
- or npc multicrew,
- or a revamped Powerplay,
- or more player agency in supercruise,
- or more SRV types,
- or a planetary mining mechanic,
- or planets with volcanism,
- or flying in the upper atmospheres of gas giants,
- or seeing npc crew walking around in stations to make it all feel more alive.

I have no idea whether we will get any of that stuff either, or when. I will just take the game for what it is and wait for what comes our way. The FD peoples decide, as FD are the ones that have to build this huge game.

I do hope FD will spend a bit more time on features that do not just cater to the multiplayer crowd, but instead are of use to all of us.
Notice that the list off stuff I mentioned is of use to everybody who plays the game, no matter whether they are soloists or multiplayer fans.
As a soloist I feel a bit left out at the moment. I can't use Wings, and I won't be enjoying multicrew either.
Having said that... from a development perspective I completely understand that multiplayer multicrew was prioritized.

In the end I trust that FD has a good development plan and I will be waiting patiently.

 

[Infidel Deity]

Most of the old players will be dead, before space legs. [yesnod]

 

[PiLhEaD]

I've never felt any desire for 'space legs' - Elite for me is about being a CMDR in a ship (and SRV).

I've played enough of NMS to find that alternating back and forth between kb+mouse and controller soon gets irritating/tiresome. So I'm actually pretty pleased that it may never arrive, as per Sandy's "...if we get there, if we manage it [space legs]...".

I'd much rather they address any EVA gameplay by using droids/probes/UAV (USV?) that work like the fighter - where you take control and pilot it around a derelict space station or ship - with maybe a grapple for any cargo - anybody remember that early game with dangling cargo and 'real physics'?

The 'CMDR in ship' core to ED is one reason I feel uneasy about their attempts to bolt on 'team play' elements (MC, Wings, PP, CQC...), and I'd love to know the current uptake of these elements. Even Sandy acknowledged uncertainty as to the long-term uptake of MC by saying they'd expand it only if it proves popular.

One additional minor worry for me was that Sandy revealed that the Keelback was designed before they thought up multi-crew. Given that the multi-crew 'headline' is such a large and time-consuming part of producing 2.3 it does make me wonder how detailed and/or firm any long-term plans they have for ED really are.

For 3.0 I suspect the headline will be Thargoids - doubly so after all DBOBE's hints that the current 'aliens' may not be all they seem, or even real! Thargoids have long seemed the most obvious 'easy sell' for season 3.

[edit] Also, I very strongly doubt FDev want to give Thargoids away free to all the new PS4 players.

In the mean time, there's many other areas that would benefit from some love. For example, planetary exploration seems ripe for improvement, with semi-permanent and points of interest on the navigation panel - such as mineral fields, ruins, crashed ships/cargo, geological features - by means of the Detailed Surface Scanner.

And to be honest, a new 'ships' release would be very welcome - maybe one new ship in each class/type.

Similarly a push to add more planetary types we can land on/interact with, would be very welcome.

However I do understand FDev's dilemma in that 'improving existing' doesn't necessarily encourage new players in as easily as 'new shiny'.

/ramble

...I do hope FD will spend a bit more time on features that do not just cater to the multiplayer crowd, but instead are of use to all of us. I feel a bit left out at the moment.

Very much seconded!

 

[Lightspeed]

Most of the old players will be dead, before space legs. [yesnod]

Might be space zimmers !

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I wonder if FD will sell another "all DLC" pass again?

To me that will be a good yardstick as to how much faith FD have in the longevity of thier product still.

The people who paid 130 quid last year will be expecting at least 3 more major expansions after S2 to break even imo

 

[kilvenny]

FD are not going to release space legs in one single release, it will be staged, that means it will compare poorly to the well known franchises that are releasing in the last 12 months, so I can understand delaying it for a while. I think we need to look for content that can be delivered in a form that is optional, so players can choose whether they buy it and it can easily be made optional. Landing on other different types of planets is one obvious option, more ships is another. Now they can add stations via server updates this opens a huge avenue of opportunities for player owned stations. Travelling around in the beta, there is now quite a lot of variety in the modular outposts and planet stations, that could be utilised to form player owned stations. It feels like a lot of base work has been done in this area over the last season and I am intrigued to see if this is what they plan to build on for the next DLC. It could also be used for player factions, eg building megaships to aid expansion although that becomes problematic if some players do not possess the DLC. If it was added in a form that enabled you to buy with in game credits the modular pieces or indeed have to gather materials to build them and have some sort of research/development tree that you have to progress through to unlock elements that would create some gameplay opportunities as well as a credit sink.

In my view as the game matures finding opportunities for credit sinks is important. It also feels to me like they want to bring players together in open and that would be aided by developing player factions and tools to enable collective gaming.

My vote then goes to some form of player owned stations for season 3.0

 

[newman1702]

I am pretty certain I remember a David Braben video somewhere that talked about the stages we would go through:

landing on airless planets with volcanic activity;
other airless planets with atmosphere;
gas giants (what would you do in a gas giant atmosphere?)
finally ... activity on planets with air.

There was never any talk about walking around, as far as I can remember. The emphasis has always been on in-ship activities (edit - and SRV activities)

So we haven't even started with the first on the list, yet.

That was him explaining priorities of planet-related gameplay, not him saying that's everything they'll do or the only thing they'll focus at. I'm fairly sure they said they plan on introducing space legs some time in the future, but if you want a link I'm afraid I don't have time to dig one up - if you're interested, go through old Braben interviews, I'm sure it's in there somewhere.

The trouble with FDev is that they apparently don't even realize that their actions set us up for disappointment; introducing multi-crew and player avatars led a lot of people to believe that space legs can't be far behind, as these features are something you'd want already implemented before you could go space legs. A lot of us, myself included, were thinking "why do these features inside a planetary landing expansion unless the next one is about walking around?"

FDev aren't great at realizing how their actions are interpreted, and because they're playing things so close to the chest guessing is all we've got; unfortunately, when they appear to go in one direction, they create a set of expectations in the community, then it turns out our guess where they were going is wrong, and still they don't replace our wrong guess with solid info on what the next expansion is going to be, which can only leave disappointment in it's place.

Now, the next one might still be amazing, but personally I can't help but be disappointed I won't be able to take a walk inside my ships, drop some stuff in my quarters and check things in engineering before disembarking to the station's bar to try and find a black market contact. Things like that.

Maybe the next expansion is about giving explorers some meaningful content. Play this after you've read that last sentence.

 

[LKx]

To then have another half-baked thing that steals time from main gameplay improvements? Nah, first flesh out the main one much more, there is just yet no need to compete with FPS and whatever..

I understand your position, but the way they develop things, we'll get every feature half backed, either it is released in s3 or in s10.

It's their way of doing things, even with multicrew, they develop a limited functionality multicrew to see how it's received.
Well, personally i think that this way of thinking is what will bring even this feature to its doom, which may seem against my own argument, but they just do that.

I might change my mind if they declare that for the time being they will dedicate to improve the core of what they have, but it won't happen, because they will have to cash in new features at some point, i'm just worried that it might something that no one really want (the development until now didn't show much sense of direction... or rather kind of a misdirection)