Dear Dev's: What's the Long-Term Vision?

Please don't make this into a "I love/hate Elite" thread. This also isn't meant to be a suggestion thread. Just asking questions and praying that Frontier answers them.

I'm currently recovering from my rage quit, but I'm curious about where this game is headed. It seems that I'm not alone either. One thing that all of the complaints (both recent and past) have in common is that there's a sense of uncertainty about how the game's experience is supposed to be and where its going. People have also been going back to the old Kickstarter videos and random developer quotes to try figure it out and no one has come to a consensus yet. The speculation has been running rampant for a while now and I think its a good time to try to put that all to rest. I'm not asking for another roadmap (we already have one). I want to know what the goals are for the game in the long run. These are some of the question that I have and that I've seen floating around. Hopefully someone at Frontier can address these. We don't need concrete due dates or guarantees for any of them, but it'd be nice to at least get some thoughts on what the Dev's think is reasonably possible (because some features, while possible, are not very reasonable lol).

I'm going to pose these as questions in a list. What questions do you have about the future of the game? Feel free to comment them.

Features
  1. Is "Space Legs" something you think will get added one day? Will we ever see our commanders interacting in stations and aboard ships?
  2. Will we ever have a more complex NPC Crew? Will our ships ever become staffed with NPC's?
  3. Are Atmospheric Landings with massive cities and ports possible?
  4. Will players be able to pilot larger ships? Will Player Factions ever have access to capital ships?
  5. Will HUD Color ever be changeable in-game?
  6. Will Ship interiors ever become fully customizable? We will be able to see the rest of the ship interior?
  7. Will our Commanders ever have voices? Will we be able to communicate with NPC's?
  8. Will the Main Menu rendering ever get changed? (I'm being a bit silly, but really. It hasn't changed)
  9. Will we ever see high performance "small" ships? ("End Game" is currently dominated by large and high-end medium ships)

Gameplay
  1. Will Wings and Multi-Crew ever be compatible with each other?
  2. We will ever have a ranking for skill? (current ranks are for experience)
  3. Will missions and payouts scale more with our CMDR's? (They currently scale with travel distance, CMDR rank, and rep)
  4. Will CQC ever be connected to the main game?
  5. Will Credits always be the only main resource, or will new items of value be introduced? (There are Claims that Credits = Power. Will it stay that way?)

Bugs and Complaints
  1. Will Combat Logging ever be dealt with? How hard is it to fix?
  2. Is the game supposed to feel "grindy" or is that simply how it is at the moment?
  3. Will we be able to buy a ship color for all ships instead of buying ship oriented packs?

I might just be wasting keystrokes, but it'd be nice to have a chat about the future of the game with the Dev's. Each time there's a livestream, everyone dumps a bucket of questions on them when the topic is a "Lets Play" or something. A forum post or Q&A livestream would be great, but I'd also love a concept video of what the Dev's think the game will look like in 2025 or something.

TLDR;
Its been a while since we heard the Dev's talk about what they want to accomplish with the game. Give us something to get hyped about and answer some questions so that people can stop arguing without facts.
 
Guaranteed you're not going to get anything more than a few one line answers from anyone other than community managers.

Personal pleas to the dev team don't work.
 
Ah.

The return of the ole "Open Letter to Fdev" thread.

What joy it was to make a mockery of those!

In any case while I could answer those questions for you... No. I'm going to just sit here and shake my head at your Sloth.

And don't expect any official responce on any of this because said official responses have already been made. And they only make them ONCE.
 
The devs would be bonkers to respond.
As a whole the forum has repeatedly proved incapable of dealing with any issue in a non-loonie fashion.
As far as the forum goes it is impossible for the devs to take any action that wouldn't be met with a total melt down by at least some fraction of posters.
 
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1-8. No.
9. Already in game.

1. No.
2. Explain your idea on how to rank something as nebulous as skill without invoking deliberate bad play to game the system.
3. How else could they scale?
4. No.
5. Explain what items of value you'd like to see.

1. How can you fix people disconnecting? Send a member of staff around their house to glue their lan cable in?
2. Define grind. I enjoy collecting stuff, it's not a grind for me. If everything is given for free/zero effort then there is no longevity. Explain your solution.
3. No, because this is a business.

See. It's easy to put out some question or other when you have no solutions yourself.
 
1-8. No.
9. Already in game.

1. No.
2. Explain your idea on how to rank something as nebulous as skill without invoking deliberate bad play to game the system.
3. How else could they scale?
4. No.
5. Explain what items of value you'd like to see.

1. How can you fix people disconnecting? Send a member of staff around their house to glue their lan cable in?
2. Define grind. I enjoy collecting stuff, it's not a grind for me. If everything is given for free/zero effort then there is no longevity. Explain your solution.
3. No, because this is a business.

See. It's easy to put out some question or other when you have no solutions yourself.

I mean, overall this pretty much sums it up.

Nah, the real question is: will cheese ever be a tradable commodity? And if not, why the hell not?

Cheese isn't the important one.

Salt is the one. When will be able to trade salt as a commodity?
 
Also, why don't our holograms have a "H" stuck to their foreheads? Everyone knows that's the official way in which to designate a hologram.

Meanwhile, in the backroom of some Anaconda somewhere in the galaxy....

k6prfDo.gif


I can't see you as my eyes are shut.

That's just outrageous. I demand you open your eyes and keep them open like I do. My way is the correct way.
 
Features
  1. Is "Space Legs" something you think will get added one day? Will we ever see our commanders interacting in stations and aboard ships?
  2. Will we ever have a more complex NPC Crew? Will our ships ever become staffed with NPC's?
  3. Are Atmospheric Landings with massive cities and ports possible?
  4. Will players be able to pilot larger ships? Will Player Factions ever have access to capital ships?
  5. Will HUD Color ever be changeable in-game?
  6. Will Ship interiors ever become fully customizable? We will be able to see the rest of the ship interior?
  7. Will our Commanders ever have voices? Will we be able to communicate with NPC's?
  8. Will the Main Menu rendering ever get changed? (I'm being a bit silly, but really. It hasn't changed)
  9. Will we ever see high performance "small" ships? ("End Game" is currently dominated by large and high-end medium ships)

1. After Atmospheric Landing, circa not-a-season 9.
2. Maybe, but not all that complex. There is only so much room on our bridges, and non-bridge crew aren't important enough to bother with implementing.
3. Possible, yes, definitely possible. Probable? That waits to be seen.
4. Fleet Carriers are something in the works, no idea how large they will be, or if they'll actually be piloted like a regular ship. What's with the size fixation? Compensating for something?
5. It's possible, but unlikely, since this data is loaded during the game executive startup. It may be possible to implement a HUD color-changer that states: "You must exit and restart the game for this change to take effect."
6. Probably, when monetized properly.
7. Purchase Microphone, speak into Microphone. Your commander now has a voice.
8. Does it really need to? How much time do you actually spend looking at it? Level of importance: -14
9. Ever heard of the Vulture?

Gameplay
  1. Will Wings and Multi-Crew ever be compatible with each other?
  2. We will ever have a ranking for skill? (current ranks are for experience)
  3. Will missions and payouts scale more with our CMDR's? (They currently scale with travel distance, CMDR rank, and rep)
  4. Will CQC ever be connected to the main game?
  5. Will Credits always be the only main resource, or will new items of value be introduced? (There are Claims that Credits = Power. Will it stay that way?)

1. They're barely compatible with themselves.
2. How would that even work? Based on what criteria?
3. Less credits, not more, is the Frontier way. Elite: Austerity is in effect.
4. Ehhh... we already have PVP on a galactic scale.
5. Exquisite Focus Crystals, Pharmeceutical Isolators and Polonium are pretty valuable in their own right....

Bugs and Complaints
  1. Will Combat Logging ever be dealt with? How hard is it to fix?
  2. Is the game supposed to feel "grindy" or is that simply how it is at the moment?
  3. Will we be able to buy a ship color for all ships instead of buying ship oriented packs?

1. Honestly, don't count on it. Though they are working on Secret Things, it would take a Human Nature change to actually stop this, and that is beyond Frontier's control, any government's control, or even the control of the gods themselves. It's nearly impossible to fix in any manner than anyone ever worrying about it being fixed would want. It's far too simple a matter already to Layer 7 or even Layer 3 block a player from your router, if you have something other than a Electronics Mart router, and it's better than any Combat Logging, they are simply prohibited from communicating with you at either the application or network level. On my Juniper router it takes as long as it takes me to type an IP address to banish someone, or even an entire country from being able to send any data at all. And there are too many ways to engineer an application crash in Windows to make a disconnection look like anything other than an application fault. Worse still, it's not even that hard to do to someone else, making it appear as if they were the one who actually combat logged. So I really would just put down any hopes or dreams of anything substantial ever being done about this like Old Yeller, and move on with the rest of your life.

2. Yes, it is, because you only "grind" if you choose to. Clearly you've chosen to.
3. Wouldn't that be nice? A "Red" pack with "Red paint" with a Red Paintjob for any ship you own, instead of having to buy 30+ packs of paint for one color. But they'd much rather sell you 30 packs of paint, it's more money that way.

TL;DR : Patience will take care of most of these things, accepting some things cannot and will not change will take care of the rest.
 
Will SRVS ever be compatible with multicrew, so I can fly out to a Thargoid site, and drop by buddy out in an SRV to explore it, then even park my ship, and drop out and rive about myself, then both of us get back into the ship and fly off?
 
Will any ship in ED ever be capable of basic spaceflight - as in, being allowed to move under its own propulsion, seamlessly, in "normal space", without having to resort to the warp-drive transition-fest?
 
Please don't make this into a "I love/hate Elite" thread. This also isn't meant to be a suggestion thread. Just asking questions and praying that Frontier answers them.

I'm currently recovering from my rage quit, but I'm curious about where this game is headed. It seems that I'm not alone either. One thing that all of the complaints (both recent and past) have in common is that there's a sense of uncertainty about how the game's experience is supposed to be and where its going. People have also been going back to the old Kickstarter videos and random developer quotes to try figure it out and no one has come to a consensus yet. The speculation has been running rampant for a while now and I think its a good time to try to put that all to rest. I'm not asking for another roadmap (we already have one). I want to know what the goals are for the game in the long run. These are some of the question that I have and that I've seen floating around. Hopefully someone at Frontier can address these. We don't need concrete due dates or guarantees for any of them, but it'd be nice to at least get some thoughts on what the Dev's think is reasonably possible (because some features, while possible, are not very reasonable lol).

I'm going to pose these as questions in a list. What questions do you have about the future of the game? Feel free to comment them.

Features
  1. Is "Space Legs" something you think will get added one day? Will we ever see our commanders interacting in stations and aboard ships?
  2. Will we ever have a more complex NPC Crew? Will our ships ever become staffed with NPC's?
  3. Are Atmospheric Landings with massive cities and ports possible?
  4. Will players be able to pilot larger ships? Will Player Factions ever have access to capital ships?
  5. Will HUD Color ever be changeable in-game?
  6. Will Ship interiors ever become fully customizable? We will be able to see the rest of the ship interior?
  7. Will our Commanders ever have voices? Will we be able to communicate with NPC's?
  8. Will the Main Menu rendering ever get changed? (I'm being a bit silly, but really. It hasn't changed)
  9. Will we ever see high performance "small" ships? ("End Game" is currently dominated by large and high-end medium ships)

Gameplay
  1. Will Wings and Multi-Crew ever be compatible with each other?
  2. We will ever have a ranking for skill? (current ranks are for experience)
  3. Will missions and payouts scale more with our CMDR's? (They currently scale with travel distance, CMDR rank, and rep)
  4. Will CQC ever be connected to the main game?
  5. Will Credits always be the only main resource, or will new items of value be introduced? (There are Claims that Credits = Power. Will it stay that way?)

Bugs and Complaints
  1. Will Combat Logging ever be dealt with? How hard is it to fix?
  2. Is the game supposed to feel "grindy" or is that simply how it is at the moment?
  3. Will we be able to buy a ship color for all ships instead of buying ship oriented packs?

I might just be wasting keystrokes, but it'd be nice to have a chat about the future of the game with the Dev's. Each time there's a livestream, everyone dumps a bucket of questions on them when the topic is a "Lets Play" or something. A forum post or Q&A livestream would be great, but I'd also love a concept video of what the Dev's think the game will look like in 2025 or something.

TLDR;
Its been a while since we heard the Dev's talk about what they want to accomplish with the game. Give us something to get hyped about and answer some questions so that people can stop arguing without facts.

This might help. https://elitedangerous2016.wordpress.com/2016/06/14/beyond-the-horizon/
 
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