It's Been Five Years Since The Elite Dangerous Kickstarter Was Launched

If any Cmdrs do get together to let off some chaff, I would be happy to know.

Cheers

There's Lavecon every June/July organised by the Lave Radio crew Linky
And various meet-ups from Frontier's official one to EliteMeet started by yours truely (but gratefully organised by Mike Snoswell and Psykokow now) and various smaller meet-ups all over the world.
 

Philip Coutts

Volunteer Moderator
Ahhh 5 years already, how time has flown. Like other commanders I look back wistfully at some of the videos from the kickstarter and wonder what might have been, the Damocles one in particular. Nice spontaneous combat assignment and all that. But overall I look at the game and wonder. It really is a thing of beauty, is it perfect? No, but you know what, I still think there is a lot to come.
 
There's Lavecon every June/July organised by the Lave Radio crew Linky
And various meet-ups from Frontier's official one to EliteMeet started by yours truely (but gratefully organised by Mike Snoswell and Psykokow now) and various smaller meet-ups all over the world.

This is good to know, I shall try to keep this in mind :)

Thank you Alien
 
Thanks for reminding Alien

Five years already, time flies …
Found about Kickstarter in December 2012 and went for Premium Backer after figuring out what Kickstarter was all about. Updated later to Alpha 3 couldn’t wait longer to start playing Elite!

Still remember meeting my first CMDR in space – tried looking into his cockpit – if I could spot him :rolleyes: :eek:

Never signed up to the Frontier forms before, just searched them if there was any new of Elite 4, had to dial in then in those days

Most of all cannot believe I’m playing E: D regularly, then again loading is now much faster than from tape 😊
 
5 years! wow that went fast! Crikey, i should really think about starting my ED adventures soon :)

I think it was the bbc article that notified me that ED was going to be kickstarted, and around that time we had things like SC going on so i had become familiar with that Kickstarter was about. I backed at the £80 Lifetime Pass level (digital only, as i'm not interested in plastic!) and it's been fun watching from the sidelines as the game has developed and changed. So just 5 more years until ED is finished, has all the Quality of Life improvements and i can feel 'ready' to start playing. I just so dislike beta-testing! I want a fully finished product before investing time in it :D
 
5 years! wow that went fast! Crikey, i should really think about starting my ED adventures soon :)

I think it was the bbc article that notified me that ED was going to be kickstarted, and around that time we had things like SC going on so i had become familiar with that Kickstarter was about. I backed at the £80 Lifetime Pass level (digital only, as i'm not interested in plastic!) and it's been fun watching from the sidelines as the game has developed and changed. So just 5 more years until ED is finished, has all the Quality of Life improvements and i can feel 'ready' to start playing. I just so dislike beta-testing! I want a fully finished product before investing time in it :D

To be fair, it is best time to get into game. I just recently have done casual flying around and most of major bugs are gone, everything feels butter smooth. Passengers plus cargo plus data delivery in Cobra is so rewarding and fun.
 
I completely missed the kickstarter and deliberately avoided the game for a long time - I knew the time drain it'd become :)

Eventually I succumbed.
 
On paper, when you were reading the KS page, what a game !

Without mention of VR, 3D cockpit, properly generated Milky Way galaxy, any mention of factions, damage models, etc. etc. etc.?

I know you want to bait on FD delivery, but really, KS promised very, very little. For good reasons. Do your home work and stop trolling please.
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
It's been quite a ride for sure! Seems at once ages ago and also just yesterday. I think I measure Elite Dangerous time more on forum 'ticks' than I do stuff in-game. The community has grown substantially since I first came on board, and even that was after the immediate influx of folks at the start of Kickstarter. (TJ remembers everything, since he's positively prehistoric).

Well, this was never my understanding.

Blame TJ?

Indeed. Nice sig, btw. Talk about a blast from the past. ;)
 
Oss133, i think you just gave my moderation team a heart attack. I can't feel their pulses any more. Nice to see you back around! :)

I look in from time to time but don't post much these days.

A few of the old crowd like Alien always get my attention though.

Indeed. Nice sig, btw. Talk about a blast from the past. ;)
Self endorsement is no recommendation.
 
Fantastic. I was one of the lurkers, finally joining for the first day of beta. It was thrilling stuff, and the forum was full of great discussions about AI and physics and astronomy. I really looked forward to the Friday newsletters!

Now I rarely play the game, mostly following it through youtube videos and the devtracker. Still, it's the only game I follow with any regularity, and I look forward to the next 5 years tremendously!
 
A stretch goal of the kickstarter was a port to MacOS.

Having taken the money, Frontier quickly turned around and dumped further development of the port. The excuse was a misleading claim that Macs did not support compute shaders. This was untrue. Directly after, Frontier began stonewalling the Mac community and designing out Macs from Horizon for activities that had no relation to canards about compute shaders. You can read many threads documenting this in the Mac subforums. Most of us on the Mac have transferred over to bootcamp running Windows 7, 8, or 10. To anticipate the whining of Windows fan boys, the point is not whether macs are gaming machines -- they are not -- but how Frontier duped the mac community for its money.

Why is this important? Because Frontier is a corporation primarily concerned with maximizing profit. It is not committed to Elite as a long-term intellectual property. The sloppy design and implementation of powerplay, engineers, and multi-crew, along with the constant nerfs to income and reputation progression are evidence of this.

It is all well and good to celebrate Elite. It's original vision of a virtual world in space was inspiring. I was completely onboard. The betrayal of some of its community, and the beggarding of the rest, bespeaks a contempt for its customers (pilots).

Keep that in mind while you celebrate.

It is posts like this that make me think that the Mac community deserve it. But that would be wrong as not all the mac community are like you. Pretty sure they did not dupe you. They most likely didn't realise that Apple would not support the better versions of open gl. Apple had no reason not to. Apple could have used Vulkan which is has similarities to open gl, but no. They decided to create their own API which was substandard. Metal 2 maybe up to scratch, but I can see FD looking at the Mac numbers and wondering if it is worth the money. Most likely not.

Don't blame FDev for Apples decisions.

Back to the original post, I missed the kickstarter. Wished I didn't though.
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Self endorsement is no recommendation.

Aww.... and you posted without your sig!

uvI36tp.gif
 
A stretch goal of the kickstarter was a port to MacOS.

Having taken the money, Frontier quickly turned around and dumped further development of the port. The excuse was a misleading claim that Macs did not support compute shaders. This was untrue. Directly after, Frontier began stonewalling the Mac community and designing out Macs from Horizon for activities that had no relation to canards about compute shaders. You can read many threads documenting this in the Mac subforums. Most of us on the Mac have transferred over to bootcamp running Windows 7, 8, or 10. To anticipate the whining of Windows fan boys, the point is not whether macs are gaming machines -- they are not -- but how Frontier duped the mac community for its money.

Why is this important? Because Frontier is a corporation primarily concerned with maximizing profit. It is not committed to Elite as a long-term intellectual property. The sloppy design and implementation of powerplay, engineers, and multi-crew, along with the constant nerfs to income and reputation progression are evidence of this.

It is all well and good to celebrate Elite. It's original vision of a virtual world in space was inspiring. I was completely onboard. The betrayal of some of its community, and the beggarding of the rest, bespeaks a contempt for its customers (pilots).

Keep that in mind while you celebrate.

No, MacOS Metal 1 did not support compute shaders AT REQUIRED LEVEL. Stop being so cultish people. Apple owned you. They don't care about gaming on desktop. Also consider they will have to port MacOS version to Metal 2 if they want to continue to support it. Those are new costs.

Just for reference - it took several years for proffesional Mac porters as Feral to tame Metal and start to support DX11 games.
 
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