I'm putting out this in the spirit of Johnathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal". I think you Brits had too many pints last night. 
Will I ever be able to get out of my ship?
- Thread starter Kappy01
- Start date
As atmospheric planets and spacelegs seem to have crossed into the "stuff we could do but..." territory, I think it's a good time to leave this link here, from one of ED's very own newsletters...
http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u...&id=ac1081437f&e=0439f6773e#launch and beyond
If you scroll to the "To launch and beyond with the the lifetime expansion pass" article, you can read a very interesting text where both atmo planets and spacelegs are said to be things that would (not could, no but) be done, ending the article with a call to purchase the lifetime expansion pass. Backing out now would be blatant bait and switch.
Some passages:
"Major new features will include planetary landings and even walking around inside ships, stations, and planet surfaces with time."
"That means rich, varied experiences. Not just landing pads, but rich content on the surfaces, surface vehicles, the ability to stash things there, to explore. Clearly ‘doing it right’ like this will take time, but we have a plan and will get there via a series of meaningful releases.
"We believe that each stage will be incredible, and the result truly breathtaking. What you will see on the worlds will be a mix of procedurally generated content, particularly the landscapes, cloudscapes, compositions and so on, mixed with hand-crafted elements."
"We also plan to allow you to get up out of your seat and walk around your ship"
"Of course walking round your ship will be nice, but it is the just springboard for a very significant expansion of gameplay – you will be able to experience the inside of starports and interact with other players and AI characters, and even board other people’s ships in space and take them by force, as shown in this concept piece."
"Of course this will be further expanded to include walking around on the surfaces of planets too."
http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u...&id=ac1081437f&e=0439f6773e#launch and beyond
If you scroll to the "To launch and beyond with the the lifetime expansion pass" article, you can read a very interesting text where both atmo planets and spacelegs are said to be things that would (not could, no but) be done, ending the article with a call to purchase the lifetime expansion pass. Backing out now would be blatant bait and switch.
Some passages:
"Major new features will include planetary landings and even walking around inside ships, stations, and planet surfaces with time."
"That means rich, varied experiences. Not just landing pads, but rich content on the surfaces, surface vehicles, the ability to stash things there, to explore. Clearly ‘doing it right’ like this will take time, but we have a plan and will get there via a series of meaningful releases.
"We believe that each stage will be incredible, and the result truly breathtaking. What you will see on the worlds will be a mix of procedurally generated content, particularly the landscapes, cloudscapes, compositions and so on, mixed with hand-crafted elements."
"We also plan to allow you to get up out of your seat and walk around your ship"
"Of course walking round your ship will be nice, but it is the just springboard for a very significant expansion of gameplay – you will be able to experience the inside of starports and interact with other players and AI characters, and even board other people’s ships in space and take them by force, as shown in this concept piece."
"Of course this will be further expanded to include walking around on the surfaces of planets too."
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NecoMachina
N
This post right here makes me INFINITELY more happy than all other features, trailers, hype-building, etc that Frontier has done over the past 2 years combined. This gives me a bit of hope that just maybe you guys do actually "get it". Far too early to get excited or hyped just yet. But hearing you say that FDEV are taking into consideration whether or not new features are actually ADDING to the game, or are just a bolted on piece of fluff that doesn't really add any depth is quite encouraging.
I'd love to see space legs at some point. Wouldn't be terribly sad if they never happened. But NO feature that gets added is going to make me happy as long as the "core game" feels like a hollow placeholder of disjointed game mechanics.
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NecoMachina
N
This seems like an idea worth brainstorming further. Exploration DESPERATELY needs to be more than just "target planet, point at it and wait for a few seconds." Might be cool to have optional science-y modules that we could interact with. It could give us data such as "I'm detecting a strong electromagnetic anomaly in this region" or whatever. And as you say it could be a separate interface - not trying to cram even more functionality into the already cluttered panels we have now. Also adds more potential to have science and exploration aspects to multicrew, or get out of your seat and do it yourself if you fly solo. Could maybe even have it where you had an optional fade-to-black and you are now manning the science console without being able to get up and walk to it just yet (that could be added later if/when space legs becomes a thing). Obviously alot more thought needs to be put into this, but hopefully this gets jotted down for potential brainstorming somewhere down the line.
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You sound pretty sensible and level headed, and also, correct to me.
I mean, creating a character is a pretty basic function and yeah, shudda been in from day one of launch, but as it wasn't, adding it in later, complete with a tonne customisation options you pay for, at the exact same time, tells a tale or two don't you think?
At least they gave you basic colour changes for the suit though. They didn't even allow that for ships, which I still think is an utter travesty.
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Life is totally meaningless for sure, but everyone has to live in blissfull ignorance of that fact.
Everything you ever do or say, the money you earn, the places you go, the experiences you have; its all meaningless in the end. When you kick the bucket you cant take any of it with you, and you cant reminisce about any of it because your dead!
No matter what religion you are, you never get to come back as you again, you can only ever be you once.
But thankfully humans are easily distracted so we rarely go insane having to come to terms with how meaningless our existence is on the whole
Agreed... If players could build a base this would provide a perfect avenue of interesting gameplay for both walking around and atmospheric planets (construction, supply runs, faction HQ, material & cargo storage, raids etc).
I can't see it happening though - lately I've noticed the tone of language from Frontier staff with regard to atmospheric landing and walking around becoming increasingly negative, like they're getting cold-feet over those features or something. Expansions which were once a certainty are now something they like to list out problems with, implying that they may not bother with them.
Perhaps they have been spooked by how good the planetary features of Star Citizen have been looking lately, who knows (insert pie in the sky related comments below).
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Jenner
I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
'No plan survives contact with the enemy' I guess.
I'd dearly love it if FD would tackle space legs and whatnot, so here's hoping they do.... I really do think that it would really benefit the game in the long-run.It is indeed in plan for later, not sure when, I hope for it to come in Season 3 since I consider it a core feature that should be there asap, also they added holo-me character editor and multicrew features this year so space legs might be next, it would be the logical next feature, however I don't know, I want it so bad I even bought into the Star Citizen hype for some time LOL, I'm confident Elite Dangerous will do much better, walking around an infinite number of places will be cool.
I'm going to be honest.
I'm here for space flight. This game captures that experience so beautifully, makes everything feel so real... I was telling a friend the other day that the missions I was running were really just an excuse to fly my Courier because just flying it is that much fun.
Anything that requires me to spend time doing things that are NOT flying my spaceship is something that, for me, is only goung to detract from the experience.
I don't enjoy FPS gameplay. I do enjoy space sims. While it would be nice to be able to walk around my ship or a space port, and see more of life in the Elite universe, I don't want the focus of this game to be anywhere outside the cockpit.
That said, I do want atmospheric landings. Mostly because I want atmospheric flight.
I'm here for space flight. This game captures that experience so beautifully, makes everything feel so real... I was telling a friend the other day that the missions I was running were really just an excuse to fly my Courier because just flying it is that much fun.
Anything that requires me to spend time doing things that are NOT flying my spaceship is something that, for me, is only goung to detract from the experience.
I don't enjoy FPS gameplay. I do enjoy space sims. While it would be nice to be able to walk around my ship or a space port, and see more of life in the Elite universe, I don't want the focus of this game to be anywhere outside the cockpit.
That said, I do want atmospheric landings. Mostly because I want atmospheric flight.
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Well, I agree to some extent but I doubt Star Citizen will be released anytime soon, I might be wrong but CIG is not doing so well lately, they seem to be forced to postpone releases a lot but yes, it it ever gets released, Frontier will have to do something, logical thing would be to release space legs asap so that if SC 3.0 ever releases, it will no longer be an issue in terms of competition. I'm confident FD is much more capable than CIG, all they have to do is to work on the important new features. Hopefully Season 3 will have space legs as a starting big feature, it would be pointless to just dedicate an entire paid Season to just improvements here and there. Season 2 started with planetary landings and it was the main selling point, Season 3 will need a big selling point too and that selling point might be space legs and related activities...
It's not worth the development time imo. There are far more important things to add.
I mean what's the point of them spending a year coding the 'space legs' when it will be used for 2-3 hours at most? lets be honest, once you've walked around your ship 2-3 times and walked on 3-4 planets the novelty of walking will wear off and you'll probably never bother again. So why spent all the time on it when there are more important things to work on?
I mean what's the point of them spending a year coding the 'space legs' when it will be used for 2-3 hours at most? lets be honest, once you've walked around your ship 2-3 times and walked on 3-4 planets the novelty of walking will wear off and you'll probably never bother again. So why spent all the time on it when there are more important things to work on?
Well, even if they add space legs, you are not forced to walk around, also a space sim is not just about flying, it is in most part about life in a space environment so space legs would add the missing part of the overall space experience, you will still seat at helm most of your time in any case, you can refuse any mission asking you to do on foot or EVA activities if you want, nobody prevents players from just sitting there and fly around hunting other ships, exploring or doing cargo missions, I'm quite sure they will not remove the missions giver as it is now, so ppl can continue contacting npcs via cockpit computer but there might be mission givers around stations and planets giving u more missions, in short, I don't think players will lose anything they already have with space legs but they will optionally get access to a wider experience than we have now.
It's not just walking, it is a new wide range of features you can add with it.
Except that many of the types of gameplay being proposed would require me to do just that. Boarding actions (having to defend my ship) and repairs, for two examples. Also, it would take up development resources which could otherwise be devoted to further improving the space flight gameplay.
I'd rather have the space sim I love grow deeper and more complex rather than spread itself thin expanding into other venues.
Stachel
Banned
The point of doing it is they promised it and people paid for it.
People made their own judgement on how much it would be used and whether that was worth it when they paid for it.
The fact that some people including you didn't pay for it and judge players will get only 2-3hrs out of it it is not really relevant.
When it arrives, if you don't want it, don't buy it. Simple.
Hmm I'm not so sure about Fdev being more capable than CIG... I've been playing ED since beta, and in that time I've noticed a tendency for FDev to water-down their ambitions for the sake of quick releases (think the initial 1.0 release or the multi-crew fiasco) or just misjudge what their playerbase wants (Powerplay -way too grindy, CQC -superfluous & Engineers -RNG casino went down like a lead balloon).
I have the LEP, so I've already paid for whatever we get. I don't recall FD ever promising they would do space legs. They've said they would like to do it, they presented ideas for how it might be implemented, but something showing up in a preliminary design document or discussion is not a promise. Features change as designs evolve. No final piece of software on this scale of development looks exactly like the designers thought it would when they envisioned it. Things sometimes evolve in different directions. It's the nature of develoment.
Clearly, some implementation of it is part of their vision... but it doesn't seem to be a core part, and speaking as someone who has already bought in, I'm good with that.
Here you go: http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=ac1081437f
Scroll down to "To Launch, And Beyond with the Lifetime Expansion Pass".
Both atmo planets AND space legs are said explicitly to be things that will be done. In the game's newsletter no less. Followed by a "buy the LEP" link.
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The word "promise" is a very strong, emotive, unambiguous word and one I try to avoid unless the other party specifically used it. I prefer "pledge", which suggests a strong desire to do everything possible, but with the option for a last-minute (ideally apologetic) climbdown.
That said, the Newsletter linked by Askavir is a pretty damning document. Even using the broadest interpretations of its wording I expect to see atmospheres with clouds. "What you will see on the worlds will be a mix of procedurally generated content, particularly the landscapes, cloudscapes, compositions and so on, mixed with hand-crafted elements," (emphasis mine) accompanied by a screenshot from Frontier and atmospheric planet concept art.
That's not a promise, but it's damned close and IMO will require a sincere apology, if not pro-rata refunds, if FD has to nix it.
I'm happy for you. I'm largely good with it too; loss of atmospheric planets and EVA certainly won't have me wailing and uninstalling the game. But the fact remains that people pledged (KS) for tiers including these future features, other people bought (Backers's App) collectors' editions including them, and still others bought the stand-alone LEP on the strength of them. I don't know about other territories, but here in the UK FD could find themselves on shaky legal ground if they cannot deliver something that demonstrably led to people giving them money.
And that Newsletter is pretty damning. Give me my cloudy atmospheres and I'll probably accept it as the MVP and move on. Other buyers might not be so generous in their interpretation of what FD "sold" them. To some degree or other it will no doubt be a PR mess if FD ever officially drops space legs and/or atmospheric planets.
Perhaps this is why there are so many FD posts slowly chipping away at the idea of these features' viability, rather than simply stating that they're no longer coming. Are they trying to soften the response and build a body of players who are "on their side" before dropping the hammer? Or just get a feel for how many would accept it against how many would be angry and possibly litigious? It's certainly polarising the forums.