The cult of the Space Legs

[Jukelo]

I want spacelegs, I don't even care if there's enough gameplay for it.
There is no gameplay associated with the SRV that I'm interested in, and yet I have spent dozens of hours just having fun driving across planetary surfaces because of the huge immersion factor which is what I'm all about. I see spacelegs the same way.

 

[uliando]

I want atmo flight! Will atmo be more dense than atmo in space?

 

[Barking_Mad]

I'm very sceptical about high NPC numbers in stations (which some think is a shoe-in because of Planet Coaster crowd tech), but think curtailed station interiors are probably feasible (via classic 'airlock' loading screens, no doubt, to go deeper than the docking bay).

I'd guess Frontier might use some of what they learned from Planet Coaster in terms of how Cobra handles large number of sims walking about. In Elite's favour I'd guess the amount of calculations/decisions being made about what sims should do would be far less than Planet Coaster which is from what I understand part of the reason why PC struggles with large number of guests for which it's calculating all of them. Like you say, it's all a big ask especially when you start calculating in all the random stuff you can do in a first person situation that might/should require a response in-game.

 

[VR Golgot]

I'd guess Frontier might use some of what they learned from Planet Coaster in terms of how Cobra handles large number of sims walking about. In Elite's favour I'd guess the amount of calculations/decisions being made about what sims should do would be far less than Planet Coaster which is from what I understand part of the reason why PC struggles with large number of guests for which it's calculating all of them. Like you say, it's all a big ask especially when you start calculating in all the random stuff you can do in a first person situation that might/should require a response in-game.

My bigger fear is as much polygon count as anything. I guess it depends just how hard they firewall off interiors from the main game, but they've still got to run it on console tech, in environments that are likely to be detail rich (sci fi light sourcing, screens etc), and doubtless accomodate proc gen dial up to an extent on faces. Add in faction representation (& potentially behaviour), let alone persistent NPCs, and I figure there's going to be a lot of moving parts to design around.

There was some interesting chat from PC on 'zero cost' pathing in Cobra, even on player built schemes, which sounded promising for milling NPCs, but I'm guessing linked smaller spaces are going to be the main solution. (Which wouldn't be that outlandish, space is always at a premium in space )

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

My bigger fear is as much polygon count as anything. I guess it depends just how hard they firewall off interiors from the main game, but they've still got to run it on console tech, in environments that are likely to be detail rich (sci fi light sourcing, screens etc), and doubtless accomodate proc gen dial up to an extent on faces. Add in faction representation (& potentially behaviour), let alone persistent NPCs, and I figure there's going to be a lot of moving parts to design around.

There was some interesting chat from PC on 'zero cost' pathing in Cobra, even on player built schemes, which sounded promising for milling NPCs, but I'm guessing linked smaller spaces are going to be the main solution. (Which wouldn't be that outlandish, space is always at a premium in space )

I would assume that a lot of these areas will be instanced in some way. As to whether consoles can do large amounts of people, I don't think it will be an issue. They already have games such as GTA5 which have a large amount of people/NPC's in one place. There is also Jurassic World crowds ofr console, while they are a bit simplistic to look at I doubt that the interiors in ED we will be able to explore will have that many people in them so could up the polygon count on these. To be fair only FDev know what is possible and what isn't. If they think it is achievable then I have no doubt that they will try it.

 

[Silektuo99]

Well I'm already in a cult so I can't really join, unless it's actually possible to be in more than one at a time, but that would be total lunacy!

I do agree with you though, I'd much rather be able to land on atmospherics, fly through gas giants, explore the depths of a waterworld or get chased by thargoids through the canyons of an ammonia world long before I would want to get up from my space chair.

Not that I wouldn't say no to getting space legs, but it's pretty low on the list of things I'd like to see in Elite.

Just saw this and not to resurrect this old thread, but its now mid-october, 2018. We don't have ANY of that. No legs. No atmospherics. Not even the upper atmosphere of gas giants. No depths of the waterworlds, not even new SRV's. They still haven't done anything with exploration. There is nothing wrong with players wanting to see what the rest of their ships look like. After all, ships were designed with interiors in mind. To each their own, but getting chased by thargoids through a canyon is pretty low on the list of things I'd care to see, and I have almost 750 hours in this game, I've been doing pretty much what we do since the earliest betas.

It seems like we get ship updates and micro-transactions.

 

[Cosmo]

My bigger fear is as much polygon count as anything. I guess it depends just how hard they firewall off interiors from the main game, but they've still got to run it on console tech, in environments that are likely to be detail rich (sci fi light sourcing, screens etc), and doubtless accomodate proc gen dial up to an extent on faces. Add in faction representation (& potentially behaviour), let alone persistent NPCs, and I figure there's going to be a lot of moving parts to design around.

ED scales well on low to high end platforms. So it'll look worse on consoles while PC has the highest graphics settings.

They could add NPCs the easy way like No Man's Sky in ships. I'd prefer that they move around with animations and a daily routine such as in Mass Effect 2 and Elder Scrolls Skyrim.

 

[Quantis Trap]

OP, I've been in you cult for a long time, but just calling it by a different name.

 

[TrailBlazer 143]

I wouldn't for ask Space Legs if David Braben didn't say that he plans for Elite: Dangerous to have it.

I don't ask for Forza to have... er Earth Legs. That's not in the plan for Forza and what it's about.

Elite on the other hand...

 

[fu9ar]

woof

 

[RooksBailey]

Space Legs is at the bottom of my list. Right now I am much more interested in being able to land on atmospheric planets - not Earth-likes, but barren planets with exotic conditions like Titan - as well as seeing more astronomical phenomena added to the game, such as comets. However, I wouldn't mind a tiny space legs appetizer, one that would give our avatars greater purpose. For example, I would be more than pleased just to be able to leave my SRV and walk a short distance on the surface of a planet, leaving my footprints as I go. Just for cool screenshots. Mind you, I wouldn't be outraged if Frontier was to announce a massive space legs addition to the game, one that would involve FPS mechanics and so on, but I don't expect anything like that in the near term. Seeing the lack of success CCP had with their "ambulation" dreams, not to mention the problems of that other space game that is stuck in a perpetual alpha, I don't think FDev will be too reckless pursuing what would essentially be an entirely new game that would take the focus off of flying ships. I expect space legs to drip slowly into the game, which is the smart way to go. I DON"T expect to see !!!Space Legs: The Movie!!! before Frontier exhausts every other idea and improvement.

 

[Patrick_68000]

Space Legs is at the bottom of my list. Right now I am much more interested in being able to land on atmospheric planets - not Earth-likes, but barren planets with exotic conditions like Titan - as well as seeing more astronomical phenomena added to the game, such as comets. However, I wouldn't mind a tiny space legs appetizer, one that would give our avatars greater purpose. For example, I would be more than pleased just to be able to leave my SRV and walk a short distance on the surface of a planet, leaving my footprints as I go. Just for cool screenshots. Mind you, I wouldn't be outraged if Frontier was to announce a massive space legs addition to the game, one that would involve FPS mechanics and so on, but I don't expect anything like that in the near term. Seeing the lack of success CCP had with their "ambulation" dreams, not to mention the problems of that other space game that is stuck in a perpetual alpha, I don't think FDev will be too reckless pursuing what would essentially be an entirely new game that would take the focus off of flying ships. I expect space legs to drip slowly into the game, which is the smart way to go. I DON"T expect to see !!!Space Legs: The Movie!!! before Frontier exhausts every other idea and improvement.

Same thoughts for me.

To walk around the ship and in the ship and a little in the space stations would definitely be enough for me.

 

[Kathryn Kando]

I want.... gameplay. Looking forward to enhanced gameplay for explo and mining. One of the original visions for space legs was EVA content repairing your ship, for example. That is gameplay I‘d applaude. Running around stations or barren moons with little to no purpose: I trust FD won‘t spent valuable Dev time on this. All the guys and gals demanding legs even w/o gameplay would cry out for it being bored after 5min... no thx. Let me be a space PILOT doing space PILOT things.

 

[Iron Golem]

There’s a ton of players out there barking and chasing after the space legs car. Every time I see a post about it I can’t help but imagine frontier putting off important things and finally saying to hell with it and quickly creating something that will allow you to catch the space legs car so they can stand there and watch all of you look at the coffee maker and in unison abandon the space legs cult and create the let me make a cup of coffee cult which will eventually turn into the why isn’t frontier focusing on the important stuff cult.

I try to understand why anyone wants to log into the game and get up from their seat and go look at some panels or take a closer look at the wires over there. Now if you guys seriously think they are going to create a brand new games worth of content and work just so you can walk around stations and instead of accepting missions from the cockpit having to take a train and navigate endless routes just to talk to an npc and turn around and walk back to your ship to fly off then you are not in touch with the reality of the game.

I’m starting a new cult. It’s called the I really hope frontier is focusing on the real issues and not space legs cult. Feel free to join. The only requirement is that you’re not a barking lunatic chasing disembodied legs in space.

I feel the exact same way. Look at mining and exploring. If you get legs its going to be some terrible tier zero half measure tick box on a check list implementation. All the same problems plus a entire new games worth of problems on top of that. Well all be buried in salt so deep well never see the light of the sun ever again

 

[TrailBlazer 143]

"Cult" is such a negative term these days. I vote for, "Legion"

Yeah, I'm a part of the Space Legs Legion.

 

[Aashenfox]

Totally with you OP can live without space legs. If it comes eventually, great, but only after the 'spaceship' part of this 'spaceship game' is literally perfect.

 

[CMDR Yates]

I used to think I wanted space legs till I watched that recent live stream from the Star Citizen guys showing off a dude hanging out in a station, drinking coffee and talking to mission-givers. The amount of detail and assets and dev/art time that must have gone into it was staggering. And it was all utterly tedious.

And that was a fully-voiced, hand-crafted environment for the purposes of the demonstration.

Suddenly, I realised I didn't actually care about walking around stations as gameplay. Yes, I want to see what's behind those doors and inside those buildings, but once I've had a look, I feel like I'll be satisfied and go straight back to what I actually play this game for: flying a flippin' spaceship. That's what Elite is, for me, and it's what Elite does better than any other space game. There are dozens of games that let me walk around corridors in a space station, and I don't bother to play any of them.

In this game, I don't want to have to walk around like a sucker to get missions, and eat and drink to stay healthy, or whatever else. And even if these kinds of activities are entirely optional, I'd prefer FDev didn't siphon their budget and the efforts of their artists and developers away from the core spaceship gameplay (and to do space legs right, they'd have to throw a huge amount of resources at it), when I believe giving us more to do in the pilot's chair of our spaceship would make the game far more satisfying and keep things tighter and more engaging than some bloated, unfocused sprawl of flight sim and walking simulator.

I know a lot of people are dying for space legs to happen. If it does, I'm not gonna be unhappy, but it's no longer what I'm hoping for.

 

[Aashenfox]

I used to think I wanted space legs till I watched that recent live stream from the Star Citizen guys showing off a dude hanging out in a station, drinking coffee and talking to mission-givers. The amount of detail and assets and dev/art time that must have gone into it was staggering. And it was all utterly tedious.

And that was a fully-voiced, hand-crafted environment for the purposes of the demonstration.

Suddenly, I realised I didn't actually care about walking around stations as gameplay. Yes, I want to see what's behind those doors and inside those buildings, but once I've had a look, I feel like I'll be satisfied and go straight back to what I actually play this game for: flying a flippin' spaceship. That's what Elite is, for me, and it's what Elite does better than any other space game. There are dozens of games that let me walk around corridors in a space station, and I don't bother to play any of them.

In this game, I don't want to have to walk around like a sucker to get missions, and eat and drink to stay healthy, or whatever else. And even if these kinds of activities are entirely optional, I'd prefer FDev didn't siphon their budget and the efforts of their artists and developers away from the core spaceship gameplay (and to do space legs right, they'd have to throw a huge amount of resources at it), when I believe giving us more to do in the pilot's chair of our spaceship would make the game far more satisfying and keep things tighter and more engaging than some bloated, unfocused sprawl of flight sim and walking simulator.

I know a lot of people are dying for space legs to happen. If it does, I'm not gonna be unhappy, but it's no longer what I'm hoping for.

How uncharacteristically rational for this forum.

 

[n34257]

...but once I've had a look, I feel like I'll be satisfied and go straight back to what I actually play this game for: flying a flippin' spaceship. That's what Elite is, for me, and it's what Elite does better than any other space game. There are dozens of games that let me walk around corridors in a space station, and I don't bother to play any of them.

Bingo. The trouble is, FDev have a history of listening to the players about the wrong things, or put more simply..."be careful what you wish for".

Players: We want to have more of an effect on the galaxy!
FDev: Here, have Power Play.
Result: Nobody likes it, goes back to doing very little.

Players: We want to customise our ships!
FDev: Sure, have some Engineers.
Result: Combat balance is irrevocably broken, forever. Dev resources constantly being assigned to adding more stuff to fix a problem caused by adding too much stuff in the first place.

Players: We want aliens!
FDev: Here you go...Guardians and Thargoids.
Result: Grind and grind, and after the initial excitement...more of the same.

Players: I want to make my own story!
FDev: OK, launch the Personal Narrative.
Result: A way to grind stuff that doesn't result in anything better than we already had with the Engineers and takes longer.

Players: We want better ways to play together!
FDev: Multicrew's where it's at, lads.
Result: A resounding "Meh".

Why, oh why, does anybody think the result will be any different with Space Legs? How many cries of, "But a CMDR just destroyed my ship while I was wandering around admiring the wallpaper! It's sooooooo unfair!" will we get on the forum before it's abandoned completely?

 

[Old Duck]

I used to think I wanted space legs till I watched that recent live stream from the Star Citizen guys showing off a dude hanging out in a station, drinking coffee and talking to mission-givers. The amount of detail and assets and dev/art time that must have gone into it was staggering. And it was all utterly tedious.

I want space legs, but I do NOT want Star Citizen. I'd be happy to just have space legs as an alternative to an SRV. Let me walk around a Guardian Ruin, take a selfie of my pilot standing under my ship, walk around the cockpit, etc. Frontier could add this simple interaction in the next update if they so wished. Heck, VR players already have this, and from what I've read, they enjoy this extra freedom.

Eventually I'd like to be able to walk around my ship and customize it, perform manual repairs, etc. Think Subnautica, not Star Citizen. And while it would be cool to walk to the "terminal" of my landing pad in a station, I definitely don't want this to be mandatory to complete a mission. I'd much rather have an NPC come aboard my ship and hand me a briefcase on my own bridge - drive-through is popular IRL for a reason

No, Star Citizen can keep their virtual coffee and train rides - I've got a real coffee by my side when playing ED.