News Beyond - Chapter Four - Beta Announcement

oh the xplosion looks nice, and i've doozed around mining asteroids for quite some time myself. problem is there is no point in being a miner except just that, having a cathartic moment. if instead of fancy drilling there were real purpose and demand for minerals that would be different, and it could have a whole lot of gameplay attached beyond just 'oh, cool'.

"There is no point in being an explorer except just that. (...) if instead of fancy exploration there were real purpose and demand for exploration data that would be different, (...)"

"There is no point in being a bounty hunter except just that. (...) if instead of fancy blowing ships up there were real purpose and demand for bounty hunting that would be different, (...)"


So what's the "real purpose" behind doing anything in the game? You just do stuff in-game because you (hopefully) enjoy them, whether it's mining, exploring, trading, fighting, ... , or a combination of any or all of the aforementioned.


I'm not saying all the features in ED are awesome and feature-rich the way they are, btw, but just complaining something has "no point" without providing -detailed- examples of how you'd add a point (in a way that meshes with the rest of the game) is, itself, somewhat pointless.
 
If Elite players on Apple hardware feel entitled to a refund I'd support their claim, but FDev would be nuts to just follow Apple off a cliff. What happens if Apple announce that they're no longer supporting any version of OpenGL?

that's the question someone should have made at frontier while pondering mac support. they never had any guarantee apple would keep updating opengl. they seemingly didn't envision that they would have to go beyond basic opengl for horizons, which was the only thing they could surely count on at that time. from a technical perspective it would have made more sense to support linux than mac, but of course not commercially. so it was a bit of a gamble, and they lost.

i'm not saying at all they should have gone metal. they would have if it were practical, so it surely wasn't. so dropping mac is the right decision given the circumstances, but it's still bad and is nothing but the cost of the first, risky, decision gone wrong.

my point here was not blaming frontier, but that each company acted on their own responsibility. apple did their thing, if that's a smart move or not remains to be seen, but for sure they are not to blame for frontier's choices.
 
I own Elite Dangerous: Horizons on PS4. I assume the quoted sentence is misleading.

I assume it should be read as "The beta will be available and free to all PC (Elite Dangerous and Elite Dangerous: Horizons) players." not "The beta will be available and free to all (PC Elite Dangerous) and Elite Dangerous: Horizons players.".

Your interpretation would have required a comma to make it explicit: "The beta will be available and free to all PC Elite Dangerous, and Elite Dangerous: Horizons players."


Ah English; the precision language which leaves absolutely no room for misunderstanding or misinterpretation ever.
 
I'm not saying all the features in ED are awesome and feature-rich the way they are, btw, but just complaining something has "no point" without providing -detailed- examples of how you'd add a point (in a way that meshes with the rest of the game) is, itself, somewhat pointless.

in that sense every opinion is pointless, unless you make a better game than frontier :D

well, then that's just my pointless opinion. i pointlessly just prefer depth in gameplay than fancy graphics and mini games. i think there would be a point in mining if it were necessary for ships and stations being built and maintained, which would give a point to protecting resource sites and trade, which in turn would give a point to establishing and protecting trade routes and investing in facilities, which would affect the state, developement and capabilities of factions and powers, which would give a point to actually be involved with them.

i do like explosions. just like i like shooting at rocks contemplating two suns setting, without a care in the world. blowing up entire rocks is indeed and improvement, but is not even comparable to what i just explained. which is just the game elite won't ever be: a living universe. pointless to point out, i know! :)
 
(...)

i think there would be a point in mining if it were necessary for ships and stations being built and maintained, which would give a point to protecting resource sites and trade, which in turn would give a point to establishing and protecting trade routes and investing in facilities, which would affect the state, developement and capabilities of factions and powers, which would give a point to actually be involved with them.

(...)

Which is the start of a full player-run economy. Which makes little sense in the Elite universe as Commanders are outnumbered a billion-to-one, so any impact the players would have on the game economy would be unmeasurable.

Secondly the premise of ED is that Commanders are just there in an uncaring Galaxy. Unlike most other games, the players are generally not at the center of events (although that's been changing with CGs and the Thargoid attacks etc; but even then it takes many Commanders working together).

But let's run with your proposition that players need to mine in order to keep the economy ticking over. Would it just be tonnes-sold across the entire Bubble and it all magically being redistributed, or would you need other Commanders to do that in order to supply all refineries with the needed minerals in order to keep them running or be shut down? More to the point, would it have to be the full range of minerals, as Commanders generally only mine the most lucrative stuff? Would every local industrial economy then need to be supplied with the output from the refineries and then on to the high tech systems in order to keep all manufacturing up?

But ok, so we've got our player-run economy reasonably well balanced so it all more or less works to feed the combat pilots their never-ending requirement for rebuys. Then FDev drops a new update and let's say 75% of miners run off to try whatever is new for a couple of weeks. Or something like DWE2 starts which draws 50% of them away for a couple of months. What happesn in-game? Suddenly the combat pilots can't rearm their ships or buy replacements anymore and have to go mining first?

Not against the premise per se, but how would it actually work in detail without stopping the entire game? The X series of games does do this, but is on a much smaller scale in comparison and the player can end up controlling a vast automated economic network, at which point their own personal involvement also becomes less and less pronounced.


So some of my points may or may not have merit in your proposal, but that's why I said "detailed". The broad brush-strokes are very easy to paint, but getting it all actually working inside a game takes a LOT of effort; not just from the implementation perspective (that's, in fact, often not the most work) but from a detailed design perspective.
 
Which is the start of a full player-run economy. ....

sorry, but are you really intending to draw me into a detailed game design discussion, where you a priori set what can and can't work, in a beta announcement thread no less, just because you didn't like my pointless opinion and absolutely need to shoot it down? weird ... but you win. here, have a pointless cookie!
 
Ok, nobody panic.. but can anyone tell me how to set myself in hibernation for 2 weeks?

Damn you Frontier, you just made my life an every day misery for the next 2 weeks. :(
 
Whohooo, looking forward to the streams! Curious about all the stuff, especially what they mean with "scenario interactions". Do we have any clues about what this could be?

I am thinking it could be an expansion on the megaship interactions we can do. Maybe have them tied missions, combat zones, even bass installations on the ground.
 
Cool so might get it to play some ED before Xmas, no Im not going to play the beta I want to play the game not test it. Time to get a few things done/finshed in War Frame.

Yeah thats right Jordas your golem is going down ...again and again untill I get the rest of Atlas...then to finsh Trinty and her prime, oh and then theres the last bit I need for Ash.. oh the grind is going to be real [where is it]
 
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sorry, but are you really intending to draw me into a detailed game design discussion, where you a priori set what can and can't work, in a beta announcement thread no less, just because you didn't like my pointless opinion and absolutely need to shoot it down? weird ... but you win. here, have a pointless cookie!

Sorry, that wasn't my intention and re-reading it probably came across that way. I did say I liked your premise! I'm just not sure how it could work (in this game). But yes, point taken - this discussion doesn't belong here. And have a Tim Tam in return (unfortunately virtual, so rather pointless too I guess) :)
 
MS have been doing that for Early Game Access for years now. In fact, they did it for ED on Xbox - myself and others brought the early access version of this game.

A month-long beta test is not Early Access. Additionally Early Access games are beta versions of whole games and not of updates.
 
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