I just posted a video about this, but not everyone watches those - so I thought I would post here as well. Earlier this week I got invited to the Frontier offices along with a few others - it was a bit of a surprise, but Frontier wanted us to come along and record a couple of lines of dialogue for them to use in-game. Kinda like little cameo things.
All pretty exciting stuff! Whilst there though, we were lucky enough to get a tour of the offices, and got to saw a bunch of upcoming content - mostly 2.4 related. I'm not allowed to talk about what we saw, as it is covered by NDA, but I do want to talk about my impressions of Frontier and what is going on with the game.
So - the offices are really big, that was the first thing that hit me. The second thing was all the Elite Dangerous memorabilia everywhere, from ship models to cushions to wall hangings of posters (to big to fit in even the largest room of my house). There was also stuff from other Frontier games. Those guys certainly love the projects they work on, and are very proud of them!
It's often questioned how many people work on Elite, well there were two full open plan offices - and it appeared a huge amount of the staff were dedicated to working on Elite. Numbers for Elite were easily in the region of 100+. The content we got to see was very impressive, and I think people are going to like it a lot. Most of what we saw, people will probably get to see from Frontier at E3.
There's been some worry that 2.4 is going to be a small patch, I think that concern came from the announcement that 2.4 is going to be released in sections. From what I saw, it appeared that 2.4 is going to be at least as big as all the other patches, and it certainly isn't the end of the main development of the game.
Another thing that I know has been concerning people is Frontier's talk about working on the "core mechanics" of the game after 2.4. Some people feel this means the game is going into maintenance mode with Frontier simply working on bug fixes and minor changes. We got the chance to ask for clarification on this - and the "core mechanic" changes actually means that Frontier are going to flesh out existing game mechanics and give the developers the opportunity to bring these aspects of the game inline with the original concepts as well as to perhaps add further enhancements where they can. So it seems that this is going to be big deal stuff, rather than just small tweaks.
Another thing I've seen people wonder about, is whether or not there will be new features in the future updates. Good news is that there will still be new content added to the game along with new headline features. However Frontier are not willing to talk about what that stuff is just yet.
We still don't know what the new sales model for the game will be. Frontier aren't talking on that one - but it won't be a season pass.
Bottom line; there is a huge team working on the game. Frontier are committed to the game's future, and are not winding the project down in any way, shape or form. They are aware that the game isn't perfect, and there is a strong desire within the team to add new depth to the game, and improve upon existing mechanics. What this ultimately means for the gameplay I don't know, but whatever the case - things are not going to remain static, and improvements are coming.
So, yeah - it's not as bleak as people have been imagining that's for sure. A lot of good stuff on the way.
Here's the video for anyone that wants to watch it:
https://youtu.be/OU9-PmZkoDo
Just wanted to add, what a great bunch people people work at Frontier! Very passionate about the game, and extremely friendly! It was nice to meet everyone, Ed, Zac, Sandro, Jonny, David, Dav, Sally and so many others.
