News Elite Dangerous - 2.4 and beyond

[Faybs]

Greetings Commanders,

It’s a very exciting time to be part of the Elite Dangerous galaxy. On June 27 we will welcome even more Commanders to the galaxy with the PlayStation 4 launch. These new players will join the ranks of our already incredibly active, passionate and dedicated community.

Since the launch of Elite Dangerous: The Commanders a number of weeks ago, we’ve received messages from members of the community eagerly awaiting details about the 2.4 update and the future of the game. I’m pleased to be able to share with you a little more detail on what’s to come in the short term and slightly longer term with Elite Dangerous.

2.3.10

The first thing I’d like to share with you is that we will be adding another point update on June 27, this will be for all platforms and will include a number of bug fixes, and stability and networking improvements. This includes the much-requested Anaconda cockpit appearance change and will also introduce greater security for multicrew hosts to be able to disable or limit crew members’ specific activity.

One large element of this point update is a number of “under the hood” fixes which are designed to improve stability and performance, particularly on planet surfaces. This means that we will be looking to run a beta for 2.3.10. However, we do understand that with this being a point update with a number of less visible improvements, it won’t have as many new features to play test. Nonetheless, this testing is very important to make sure the game works as we would expect. Due to the wider and more global nature of this small point update, we will be making the beta open for all and we would welcome your support in joining and spending a few hours playing and helping to ensure the update is as good and stable as it can be.

We’ll have more details on the beta, and exactly how it will work shortly.

2.4 – “????”

Back at EGX in 2015 we showcased the headline features that would be coming to Horizons. However, there’s always been an extra little update, a mystery if you will, that has yet to be revealed.

We’ll be providing a little more information about the update to the community and the press during E3 on June 13^th and 14^th. We’ll be hosting special community livestreams and activity so stay tuned for more news and updates as we get closer to the date.

I can, however, tell you that this update will be slightly different to previous ones - content will be revealed over time rather than all being available on day one. Additional pieces of exciting content will surface over the coming months as the narrative progresses.

Beyond

So with the Horizon season of expansions coming to a close, what is beyond 2.4 I hear you ask? Well, it certainly isn’t the end of this amazing journey… we’re only just getting started!

Our awesome dev team are dedicated to continuing to build and improve the Elite Dangerous experience with an exciting long term vision in mind. We’re happy to be able to confirm that the next major updates following 2.4 will focus on core gameplay, existing features, quality of life and other improvements! We’re delighted to be investing a considerable amount of development and effort into making the core gameplay experience even better for our fantastic community or players.

We’ll be sharing more news on that content and our roadmap at a very special event coming later in the year - more details on this event will be released in the weeks after E3.

On behalf of the entire Elite Dangerous team, thank you for your continued support. We are very excited to embark on the next part of the journey together as we continue to make Elite Dangerous an even more fantastic game and experience for our incredible community of players.

Hmm, looks like my initial post into this thread ended up in a hung browser window. Ah well, here it goes again. Thanks Zac for giving us a peek into where the game is going, and I'm cautiously optimistic that it seems like Frontier is going to be taking the tough road and replacing a lot of the simple game mechanics with more fleshed out ones. I wish you luck, and I'll be here to try them out.

Also, um, can we please have some more Viper Mk.IV paintjobs? I've been waiting for the chrome one for ages...

 

[Lori Jameson]

We will have more details about the "beyond" 2.4 at the special event mentioned in the post. We will be announcing details of the event a number of weeks after E3 but make sure you watch for details. It's going to be awesome.

To be fair; the last event I took part in ended with many good CMDRs on KoS lists, galaxy-wide political shifts with rifts even larger appearing in groups, the death of a leader, and the chase of the decade.

You have alot to live up to. While the event itself was little to no 'content'; like the Chernobyl disaster, we are still dealing with the fallout.

Thanks for communicating Frontier!

 

[Robert Graham]

Would you like some cheese with your whine? I paid a lot of money for the game too.....& I'd say I've already gotten more than my money's worth. More is always better, but good things come to those who wait.

Some people paid 190 ontop of buying Horizons Marc, or did you forget it's not just those of us who where original backers/Alpha/beta?

There is a valid reason for people to want to know what the change from 'Seasons' to whatever means.. because the pass was sold with the world SEASON in the description.

And frontier can head off a lot of issues very quickly simply by saying 'Yes your passes are all still valid going fowards' or 'no they are not'

There is no reason to cause people worry by side stepping the question.

 

[WR3ND]

I'm still hoping for atmospheric flights.

Thank you Zac for these great news. I really appreciate the hard work

Ha! You just made me imagine another update later on called "Wings" where we actually get real aeronautical flight mechanics, gas and liquid density and viscosity effects, etc. [woah]

But yeah, I'll be happy with piloting my ships through gas giant clouds one day too.

 

[Ziljan]

Some people paid 190 ontop of buying Horizons Marc, or did you forget it's not just those of us who where original backers/Alpha/beta?

There is a valid reason for people to want to know what the change from 'Seasons' to whatever means.. because the pass was sold with the world SEASON in the description.

I highly doubt that that Frontier would try to pull a semantic switcheroo. They wouldn't survive that from a PR or legal standpoint since they're apparently abandoning the season model, and sold the LEP(Lifetime Expansion Pass) at the same time they were selling the 2nd season. That would effectively be 2 different prices for the same product. Lol. Yeah. NOPE. A complete non-starter.

The real issue with the LEP is whether it will be a drain on future funding for the game as Frontier's LEP runway money dries up and they become in danger of not being able to continue development. Hopefully this is a problem for the distant future. The only way out of this trap is to get more customers (which they are actively doing with the PS4 port) or provide non-expansion purely cosmetic content that is irresistible to veterans. New customizable cockpits and HUDs etc. This would be like a semi-free 2 play model, but with elements of content/gameplay expansion added to generate short term revenue and maintain interest in lucrative cosmetic content.

 

[Faybs]

Ha! You just made me imagine another update later on called "Wings" where we actually get real aeronautical flight mechanics, gas and liquid density and viscosity effects, etc. [woah]

That's not going to happen, for the same reason that we have speed limits in space - a lot of ED ships are just not very aerodynamically sound, and there's going to be a lot of salt in the forums if the pvp meta ship gets into a flat spin the moment it enters the lower layers of the atmosphere. No, we'll see something that feels "right" and which takes atmospheric data into consideration, but which is pretty much completely fake. And that's fine - ED is a game, so gameplay should always be job #1.

 

[who?]

Whoa whoa, hold on there cowboy. I never asked for the ADS to be removed. I asked for BDS and IDS to be remade into Infinite range scanners that revealed stepwise less info than the ADS, so that all 3 groups could each have a scanner they wanted that revealed the desired level of detail. With the status quo remaining in the game as the middle option (IDS) And the ADS being buffed to include surface detail without a DSS (at the cost of increased mass). And the BDS revealing only dark spheres until a DSS was applied.

Hence nothing would be removed, only added, since no one uses the BDS or IDS in their current irrelevant form.

Sorry if I got that wrong!

 

[who?]

I highly doubt that that Frontier would try to pull a semantic switcheroo. They wouldn't survive that from a PR or legal standpoint since they're apparently abandoning the season model, and sold the LEP(Lifetime Expansion Pass) at the same time they were selling the 2nd season. That would effectively be 2 different prices for the same product. Lol. Yeah. NOPE. A complete non-starter.

The real issue with the LEP is whether it will be a drain on future funding for the game as Frontier's LEP runway money dries up and they become in danger of not being able to continue development. Hopefully this is a problem for the distant future. The only way out of this trap is to get more customers (which they are actively doing with the PS4 port) or provide non-expansion purely cosmetic content that is irresistible to veterans. New customizable cockpits and HUDs etc. This would be like a semi-free 2 play model, but with elements of content/gameplay expansion added to generate short term revenue and maintain interest in lucrative cosmetic content.

Even though I happily bought the LEP, I was wary that it'd put a hard-limit on the game life (obviously dependent on the LEP uptake being a significant proportion of the overall community). I think cosmetics can take up a lot of the slack - personally I've spent about 300 euros on the game, about a third of which is cosmetics over the last year alone.

What really threw petrol on the fire was them talking about how they're using revenues from existing games to fund development of future games. That, combined with any fears over the depths of new features added, the rate of release and/or the ambiguity over how long the "L" in the LEP is; is a pretty potent cause for concern.

 

[Faybs]

Even though I happily bought the LEP, I was wary that it'd put a hard-limit on the game life (obviously dependent on the LEP uptake being a significant proportion of the overall community). I think cosmetics can take up a lot of the slack - personally I've spent about 300 euros on the game, about a third of which is cosmetics over the last year alone.

What really threw petrol on the fire was them talking about how they're using revenues from existing games to fund development of future games. That, combined with any fears over the depths of new features added, the rate of release and/or the ambiguity over how long the "L" in the LEP is; is a pretty potent cause for concern.

It's easy for Frontier to put a cap on any bad effects LEP's could have: don't sell them any more. As far as I know, there were only two time periods when one could get an LEP: during kickstarter and shortly before 2.0 released (when it was around $200, so not cheap), so there probably aren't more than a few thousand (or maybe ten times that) LEP holders. I agree with Ziljan that it would be very unusual for FDev to charge LEP holders for new content, the loss of goodwill would not match any gained income from doing that. What I read between the lines is that there aren't going to be any more 1.x vs 2.x patches, instead we're going to see updates to the base game, that everyone gets (ie what we now call 1.x updates) and updates to DLC, that only owners of that DLC get (what we now call 2.x updates). Then instead of season 3, season 4 etc we'll get the atmospheric planet DLC, the spacelegs DLC, etc. Same as just about every other MMO out there. LEP owners already pre-emptively own every DLC that FDEv will ever release, and anyone else will have to pay for the DLC.

 

[WR3ND]

That's not going to happen, for the same reason that we have speed limits in space - a lot of ED ships are just not very aerodynamically sound, and there's going to be a lot of salt in the forums if the pvp meta ship gets into a flat spin the moment it enters the lower layers of the atmosphere. No, we'll see something that feels "right" and which takes atmospheric data into consideration, but which is pretty much completely fake. And that's fine - ED is a game, so gameplay should always be job #1.

They don't need to be that aerodynamically capable when they can bruit force their way through it with thrusters. There are other ways to take these sort of things into account beyond speed limits and the like, such as slowly sinking into but being able to drive over lava flows in SRVs, "floating" at certain depths in water or other liquids based on density, general maneuverability, and so on.

But yeah, I understand this is perhaps just wishful thinking on my part. We'll see.

 

[VR jefranklin18]

Phew! I was afraid you were abandoning the Mac version and all the people who paid into your Kickstarter stretch goal for a cross-platform game!

Oh, wait, that's exactly what you've done.

Perhaps if you tried gaming on something fit for purpose, you would have a better experience. Frontier have said the lack of compute shaders in Mac OS is what prevents Mac getting Horizons, so blame Mac (I know, that's really hard for the Apple fanbois). And yes, there may be some new update from Apple called ar$ewipe or whatever stupid code name they give it, but to expect Frontier for code for you and one or two others who refuse to load bootcamp, is probably peak demanding for this forum.

 

[kofeyh]

um - did you read the same thing that I read? - QoL and core fixes are EXACTLY what he said....

Rusty Dog is so livid about people cheesing quince they simply can't think straight. Apparently, this actually more important than ensuring things like multicrew work well, for example.

Oh no, stop the cheese, hang the criminals. Everything else can burn in comparison. I'm not sure why people get so very very very wound up on cheesing the BGS.

But there you go. Me? Frontier are giving the game the love it needs to grow to being more than just an assortment of things to do with no real unification of mechanics. That and making stuff work properly.

Early days. But there is hope. And I'll take it.

 

[kofeyh]

Blizzard, Feral, Aspyr and others say you're wrong, but thanks for playing "I Know Precisely Stuff-All About The Mac".

Frontier need to use shaders for the game. They can on litterally every platform. Except Mac. Now, is this Frontier being purposefully mean to the 15 people still defiantly trying to use the game on Mac (I own a number of Macs by the way) or do you think it might be they can't access the shader model needed?

I mean feel free to continue to say "3 other armchair experts and I all agree", or you can read and grasp that the platform needs to allow/ provide a thing, for Frontier to use it.

Might that change, so the shaders needed (which are available litterally everywhere else) become available on the Mac? Sure. Has that happened yet? Don't believe so. Will it? Who knows.

Frontier could probably provide an update but they may not see the point of reiterating exactly the same thing they did last time.

 

[Faybs]

They don't need to be that aerodynamically capable when they can bruit force their way through it with thrusters. There are other ways to take these sort of things into account beyond speed limits and the like, such as slowly sinking into but being able to drive over lava flows in SRVs, "floating" at certain depths in water or other liquids based on density, general maneuverability, and so on.

But yeah, I understand this is perhaps just wishful thinking on my part. We'll see.

That's exactly what I meant, they will strive to make atmospheric flight feel "right", but Bernoulli's laws are unlikely to be anywhere in the algorithm that dictates how much lift vs drag you get when flying at a certain speed and altitude. Instead there will be tables with magic constants like we have now for ship behavior in supercruise.

 

[Tel Prydain]

Sorry Zac but leaving a bunch of people who paid for a product with out an answer for a few months is not 'Going to be awesome'.
...
If your shifting away from that promise that we will not have to pay for anything beyond cosmetic stuff from the store, then to be honest you owe it to your customers to be up front about it.

Why on earth would they address some codswallop speculation that wasn't hinted at or implied in any way? Does every post from them need to include an exhaustive list of weird and nonsensical things they obviously won't do?

FDEV - WHY WON'T YOU ADDRESS THIS CRAZY SPECULATION ABOUT YOU COMING TO MY HOUSE AND STEALING MY DOG?!? IT'S TIME TO PUT THE SPECULATION TO REST!

... and there's going to be a lot of salt in the forums if the pvp meta ship gets into a flat spin the moment it enters the lower layers of the atmosphere.

Oh god, that'd be awesome though, eh?

Thanks FD and thanks to all my fellow "whiners" for pushing FD to work on improving the core game. We couldn't have done it without you.

Fanboys, you can offer apologies and thank us "whiners" any time you'd like........any time.

Forum Summary:

FDev: We're doing A, B, C and D
Everyone: Cool
FDev: Here is A
"Whiners": Where are changes to the core game?
Fanbois: Give them time. They said they were doing A, B, C and D First
FDev: Here is B
"Whiners": Where are changes to the core game?
Fanbois: Give them time. They said they were doing A, B, C and D First
"Whiners": I want changes noooooooow
Fanbois: We're like, half way through a, b, c and d. And they have been addin....
"Whiners": Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooow
FDev: Here is C
"Whiners": Where are changes to the core game?
Fanbois: Give them time. They said they were doing A, B, C and...
"Whiners": This game is DEAD now!
Fanbois: I mean... they only just did C. D's not even here ye...
"Whiners": The world is over and Elite is full of LIES
Fanbois: If you just wait a....
"Whiners": FDev is full of lies!
Fanbois: ....
"Whiners": Fdev make baby jesus cry
Fanbois: ...
"Whiners": Nothing will ever be okay again.
FDev: D is almost done. After that we'll take a look at the core game again
"Whiners": WE WIN. THIS IS ONLY HAPPENING BECAUSE OF US!!!
Fanbois: ...

+1 When i look back at what FD envisioned for this game at kickstarter and i look at what the game is right now, it is easy to see how caving in to fanboyism has warped the game into something almost unrecognisable compared to the great vision FD had.

The great vision Fdev had was:
A : A vision, not a promise
B : The end point of 10 years development.

I want you to make money, Frontier... but I think updates like atmospheric landing or space legs will sell much better than updates with only core game improvements.

They'll sell a bunch more with PS4... and know what will keep the PS4 players playing and buying paintjobs?
Core improvements.
I would expect a model where more stuff is free and Fdev extract cash through cosmetics.

That makes sense... but Zac didn't speak about new features. And that worries me.
His post was vague, not compromising... He only had to add "...and besides core game improvements, of course, exciting new features!!!".

It only worries me that FD are sticking with secrecy as their own ways of "listening to their player base".

Because talking about improvements early just put them through two years of having their hands tied.

Heh, back in the day it was not like that at all... people actually bought haulers and adders

Lord, I loved my adder.
Kinda sad that people seem to skip that step.
Would love to tie some ships to pilot rank.

To be fair; the last event I took part in ended with many good CMDRs on KoS lists, galaxy-wide political shifts with rifts even larger appearing in groups, the death of a leader, and the chase of the decade.

You have alot to live up to. While the event itself was little to no 'content'; like the Chernobyl disaster, we are still dealing with the fallout.

Thanks for communicating Frontier!

I had a lot of fun. I'd love to see more of this.

Some people paid 190 ontop of buying Horizons Marc, or did you forget it's not just those of us who where original backers/Alpha/beta?

There is a valid reason for people to want to know what the change from 'Seasons' to whatever means.. because the pass was sold with the world SEASON in the description.

And frontier can head off a lot of issues very quickly simply by saying 'Yes your passes are all still valid going fowards' or 'no they are not'

There is no reason to cause people worry by side stepping the question.

FDEV - WHY HAVE YOU NOT ADDRESSED THE SPECULATION THAT YOU'RE TRYING TO HIDE ROTTING FISH GUTS ROUND MY HOUSE?!?!?

 

[who?]

Blizzard, Feral, Aspyr and others say you're wrong, but thanks for playing "I Know Precisely Stuff-All About The Mac".

Doesn't really prove much I'm afraid; Blizzard is a subsidiary of Activision, Feral is a publisher, and Aspyr is a dedicated porting company. Blizzard have money to burn, and the other two aren't self-publishing games creators, so I'm not sure the comparison with Frontier holds.

ED Mac was feasible while we had a cross-platform graphics framework (OpenGL), but Apple's support was lack-lustre before, and now dropped entirely. Maybe the decision to go all-in on Metal to help bring iOS games across to Mac will turn out to be a good one, but it's bad news for anyone hoping to bring PC games to macOS. I'm currently playing ED in Bootcamp on an iMac, but my next machine will be my first ever PC. I still dislike Windows intensely, but I'm starting to hate Apple's "we know what you want" walled-garden attitude more.

 

[Faybs]

Doesn't really prove much I'm afraid; Blizzard is a subsidiary of Activision, Feral is a publisher, and Aspyr is a dedicated porting company. Blizzard have money to burn, and the other two aren't self-publishing games creators, so I'm not sure the comparison with Frontier holds.

ED Mac was feasible while we had a cross-platform graphics framework (OpenGL), but Apple's support was lack-lustre before, and now dropped entirely. Maybe the decision to go all-in on Metal to help bring iOS games across to Mac will turn out to be a good one, but it's bad news for anyone hoping to bring PC games to macOS. I'm currently playing ED in Bootcamp on an iMac, but my next machine will be my first ever PC. I still dislike Windows intensely, but I'm starting to hate Apple's "we know what you want" walled-garden attitude more.

Assuming similar amounts of effort, it would make more sense for FDev to port Cobra to Vulkan (supported by every modern OS) than to Metal (supported by one company that's a tiny minority of the ED user base).

 

[Ziljan]

What I read between the lines is that there aren't going to be any more 1.x vs 2.x patches, instead we're going to see updates to the base game, that everyone gets (ie what we now call 1.x updates) and updates to DLC, that only owners of that DLC get (what we now call 2.x updates). Then instead of season 3, season 4 etc we'll get the atmospheric planet DLC, the spacelegs DLC, etc. Same as just about every other MMO out there. LEP owners already pre-emptively own every DLC that FDEv will ever release, and anyone else will have to pay for the DLC.

This whole financial model seems like it could be at odds with the purpose of fleshing out the current game. Fleshing out means that the existing/revitalized skeletal bones should be able to move together in a direction since they would be connected by new sinew and muscle. However, if they are going to add stuff a la carte, then by definition it seems they would have to be modular and thus hermetically sealed from each other (eg irrelevant to the other parts of the game). It doesn't help that Frontier has a history of creating bolt-on (sealed off) addons that exacerbate the disjointed feel of the galaxy.

 

[danm]

Greetings Commanders,

It’s a very exciting time to be part of the Elite Dangerous galaxy. On June 27 we will welcome even more Commanders to the galaxy with the PlayStation 4 launch. These new players will join the ranks of our already incredibly active, passionate and dedicated community.

Since the launch of Elite Dangerous: The Commanders a number of weeks ago, we’ve received messages from members of the community eagerly awaiting details about the 2.4 update and the future of the game. I’m pleased to be able to share with you a little more detail on what’s to come in the short term and slightly longer term with Elite Dangerous.

2.3.10

The first thing I’d like to share with you is that we will be adding another point update on June 27, this will be for all platforms and will include a number of bug fixes, and stability and networking improvements. This includes the much-requested Anaconda cockpit appearance change and will also introduce greater security for multicrew hosts to be able to disable or limit crew members’ specific activity.

One large element of this point update is a number of “under the hood” fixes which are designed to improve stability and performance, particularly on planet surfaces. This means that we will be looking to run a beta for 2.3.10. However, we do understand that with this being a point update with a number of less visible improvements, it won’t have as many new features to play test. Nonetheless, this testing is very important to make sure the game works as we would expect. Due to the wider and more global nature of this small point update, we will be making the beta open for all and we would welcome your support in joining and spending a few hours playing and helping to ensure the update is as good and stable as it can be.

We’ll have more details on the beta, and exactly how it will work shortly.

2.4 – “????”

Back at EGX in 2015 we showcased the headline features that would be coming to Horizons. However, there’s always been an extra little update, a mystery if you will, that has yet to be revealed.

We’ll be providing a little more information about the update to the community and the press during E3 on June 13^th and 14^th. We’ll be hosting special community livestreams and activity so stay tuned for more news and updates as we get closer to the date.

I can, however, tell you that this update will be slightly different to previous ones - content will be revealed over time rather than all being available on day one. Additional pieces of exciting content will surface over the coming months as the narrative progresses.

Beyond

So with the Horizon season of expansions coming to a close, what is beyond 2.4 I hear you ask? Well, it certainly isn’t the end of this amazing journey… we’re only just getting started!

Our awesome dev team are dedicated to continuing to build and improve the Elite Dangerous experience with an exciting long term vision in mind. We’re happy to be able to confirm that the next major updates following 2.4 will focus on core gameplay, existing features, quality of life and other improvements! We’re delighted to be investing a considerable amount of development and effort into making the core gameplay experience even better for our fantastic community or players.

We’ll be sharing more news on that content and our roadmap at a very special event coming later in the year - more details on this event will be released in the weeks after E3.

On behalf of the entire Elite Dangerous team, thank you for your continued support. We are very excited to embark on the next part of the journey together as we continue to make Elite Dangerous an even more fantastic game and experience for our incredible community of players.

There are some interesting tidbits, and thanks for that, although it's all lost in the unnecessary marketing buzz. You could easily have conveyed all the relevant things in 10% of the words. What's the point?

 

[Mr_Foxhound]

There are some interesting tidbits, and thanks for that, although it's all lost in the unnecessary marketing buzz. You could easily have conveyed all the relevant things in 10% of the words. What's the point?

buzz words are content for FDev, mining LAZOR!