Along with Alec and a few others mentioned here, had the privilege to attend yesterday.
Frontier dedicated 5 of their team for the entire day to presenting many of the changes and improvements coming to the game in the next release.
It was by no means a polished puff piece for streamers, it was a detailed exposee and q&a on the content, with senior staff on hand asking questions of us, feedback on what was good and what needed work or improvements. There was very little of the 'it is on the roadmap for later' and an awful lot of 'let me just go and ask that part of the team' where we got into detail and provided constructive feedback on the new items we have seen already in live stream but also things they will be revealing over the forthcoming weeks.
They took away extensive notes from a broad range of the audience based on how their communities would react to certain elements, where the areas of improvement were wanted and how the new mechanics would affect people's gaming time.
Our questions weren't dodged, they weren't cagey about their answers and no, wasn't the community team presenting. They were there but the presentation was done by the team doing the doing not the talking about, if you see what I mean.
Whilst some streamers were there, others of us were representing chunks of player groups or event/content creators for in game fun.
Stuff we CAN talk about at the moment:
Exploration. Works nicely, looks great, really makes you feel like you are working to discover things and not just honk jump magic wand discovery.
The mining things that were first talked about at Lavecon have come along really nicely. Once again, there is a lot more to do whilst mining. I reckon people will enjoy it.
The lighting changes shown at Lavecon... Was nice to see it in action on a 'live' build and not just screenshots. Once again, think once people get into beta, they will be pleased with it.
Shout out as usual to the sound team. Got a big round of applause at one point. Couple of times we all shushed each other so we could just listen.
The stuff we can't mention yet as it isn't public. A huge amount of work and thought has gone into it all, am looking forward to getting my teeth into it both testing in beta and in final live release. Lots of the regular grumbles have been addressed.
It really is a large body of work. Took 6 hours to fully showcase the lot and there is still more we didn't get see. We over ran by over an hour on their plans as we were asking so many pointy questions and debating their answers. A number of the visitors put some STRONG pressure on frontier on various matters on behalf of wider player audience.
To the question earlier about the 'feel' in the office.... quite a few of the team members dropped their heads in to say hi, some of them were new faces had not met or seen on live streams before. There is a good vibe about the office there, happy looking staff (we quizzed one and the answer was 'even better now that the food isn't as bad as it was at the old office ;-) ). Delicious sandwiches btw.
For the record, yes, the numbers of people working JUST on ED are what they say, their other games were on other floors and no, jobs like HR and finance etc staff weren't part of that number,.It was all people actively working on Elite. Compared to my last visit, they arent kidding when they say the team has never been bigger. The sweeping improvements and changes have satisfied me that they havent been idle in the last year of the free 'Beyond' update.
All in all, and I appreciate there will be lots of 'but why wasn't xxx person invited', and realise I am lucky to have been invited. Am hoping we did you lot proud in terms of shouting loudly about things we are all passionate about, was great to see huge progress and my goodness am I going to have to set aside a whole day just to read the patch notes. Can't wait to get my teeth into it all.
