If they double down on the MMO features, yes I think Elite will be THE game with a bustling community. They have got to get atmo landings in ASAP though, that's the biggest remaining hole outside of deeper MMO gameplay like crafting, player trade markets, etc. Squadrons are a good first step. I'm not sure on space legs yet. Playing SC alpha I can see there is some potential there, but so much of the game seems built around needless timesinks, even more so than ED believe it or not. I'm not sure yet if spacelegs would be wise for ED.
Do we still see ED as being THE space game in 12 months?
Evochron Legacy has an answer for nearly every single gameplay curve Elite Dangerous has attempted - and it was developed almost entirely by one person. It has planetary landings, atmospheric included, and working (if basic) weather. It has a quasi-realistic physics-based flight model. It has mining (which is just as mindless as it is here, I'll admit), trading (almost as mindless as it is here), combat (Elite sort of wins in this regard, but not by too much, as the flight model makes up for the limited arsenal), and working multiplayer that doesn't reduce the game to a Free-to-Play MMO grindfest in its implementation. I find the game infinitely more enjoyable, and for good reason - the game doesn't disrespect my time by asking me to grind space pebbles in order to build and customize my ship.
Once again, the fact that it's even a match for Elite: Dangerous is pretty pitiful, given it was made by just one guy. Frontier has even less of an excuse, because the "we don't have Star Citizen's budget!" crap is laughable in light of Evochron's achievements.
Regarding Rebirth, it sucked. The space highways thing wasn't why it sucked, either. Regarding the "but I don't want to run a space business!" "argument," you don't have to. X doesn't require you to engage with any of that if you don't want to, and the game is no less for its inclusion.
Personally, I'm very fond of the idea of having more to do than running from Point A to Point B, myself.
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Utterly hilarious!
Everyone forgetting about Starfield it may be out next year.
Bethesda could be the gorilla in the room
Cheers
Bethesda could be the gorilla in the room
Cheers
Yeah, that's how I'd characterize your "rebuttal."
Are you serious? Bethesda? Come on. Come on, really?
EDIT: Just watched the "trailer" for Starfield. I can see now that you were clearly joking. Well-played.
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Its a shame because Elite is so bad atm and people say is THE SPACE GAME, but to be honest there're no other space game.
Elite for a long time didn't have any competition and this was really bad for the game as we can see the poor development for over 3 years.
I hope this changes and 3.3 to be just a tip of the iceberg for all the gameplay changes for the future.
Elite for a long time didn't have any competition and this was really bad for the game as we can see the poor development for over 3 years.
I hope this changes and 3.3 to be just a tip of the iceberg for all the gameplay changes for the future.
Wow, I didn't know about this. Bethesda is one of the very few companies with the resources and appetite to put 5 years into a game before release, and often they don't even mention anything until it's most of the way done. That means they're one of very few companies that could launch a game that's up there with Elite. And they often (eventually) add VR support. You're right - they could be the overlooked 800-pound-gorilla here.
(It looks like they haven't said enough about it for us to even know if it's similar in genre, but if it is, it will be something to watch for sure. (And if it isn't, I'll still be curious to check it out
))
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I think you're being a bit disrespectful to all developers mentioned in your comment there.
X4 will be great, and will continue the respected long line of its pure predecessors (X Rebirth was a poor attempt in a different direction), which began with X Beyond The Frontier in 1999. In the following 19 years, the team at Egosoft has done brilliant work iterating the feature set through Xtension, X2, X2TR, X3, X3TC, and X3AP, and X4 is thankfully returning to that series' core, with additional improvements like space legs and better complex construction taken from 2013's X Rebirth. Like with all previous entries in the X series, I'll be buying it on launch, then giving it a quick go and shelving for a year while Egosoft gradually fix the many game-breaking bugs it will undoubtably have. Its poor flight-model, lack of multiplayer and VR support, are its main downsides to me personally. Egosoft should be commended for working so diligently for over 20 years on practically the same game, and surviving the commercial disaster that was X Rebirth. Buy X4 and play it, to support the team.
Similar respect to the sole creator of the Evochron series, Shawn Bower, who started it with Star Wraith's release back in 2000. Just like Egosoft with their X series, Evochron's dev has continually iterated the featureset from game to game throughout the years. It too misses VR support, and its flight model is also lackluster, while the multiplayer is capped-playercount server based (not a MMO or MMO-lite). Buy it and play it to support the guy, he's fantastic.
The devs at CIG/RSI/F42/etc I feel for the most, with Star Citizen's and Squadron 42's developments hampered repeatedly by awful leadership and mismanagement. Sq42 is still a couple of years out (at least), while Star CItizen is many years away from a release (assuming all game mechanics are present in a basic fashion). Don't buy them until release, they already have enough money.
None of the above are "junior devs", and neither are FDev "letting its lunch get eaten". Development takes time, and FDev started Elite Dangerous' full production just before the Kickstarter (late 2012) - they certainly didn't start it 13+ years earlier like Egosoft and Shaun Bower did. It 6 years the devs have done a wonderful job bringing us the most immersive VR space MMO, and both 3.3 and the next era will continue to greatly improve the game. Buy paintjobs and bobbleheads if you want
Also, hype for all space games
While possible, I think Starfield will be 2020 at the earliest. Unlike the Fallout and Elder Scrolls series it needs completely new assets creating (no previous iterations), and considerable overhaul of the engine for their undoubted planet-to-planet gameplay. Fallout 76 is a tangential multiplayer game to tide over fans of the studio's games in the meantime. Looking forward to playing both
There is no contradiction there.
Starfield is pretty much an unknown at this point, we have no idea what the gameplay loop will be. Is it a ship-based space sim or is it an action rpg? My guess is it's closer to the latter; Skyrim/Fallout style gameplay and storytelling in a future setting. Maybe there is some ship-based gameplay but complimentary to the full experience, not a core feature. That's just my guess based on Bethesda's track record. I very well may be way off but it's possible that Starfield doesn't even qualify for the conversation when it comes out.
Buy paintjobs and bobbleheads if you want
Don't, buy expansions instead. Cosmetics are detrimental for a franchise future.
Only the expansions can make a game stand above all others.
It's funny you mention space legs for X4, when during multiple streams of the alpha versions that have stressed that players can develop a teleporter device that allows them to skip the space legs parts of the game by simply teleporting directly into the cockpits of any of their ships, followed by a recommendation that it should be the first thing the player researches. Even after building upon space legs since Rebirth, they practically admit that they are basically a time sinking obstacle that players will want to avoid rather than a useful set of mechanics, but rather than remove them for X4 they have decided to instead let players invest in ways to mitigate them.
I disagree. As long as Elite pulls in substantial amounts of money, it will remain a valuable property worthy of nurture with ongoing development spending. Once the income dries up, development spending will dry up too.
Cosmetics (if you want them) are a great way to help ensure that the property remains valuable.
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A very astute observation
Yes if ED has some form of atmospheric planets and hopefully EVA.
SC is not a direct competitor, because they have downsized planets (1/6th the scale) and only like 100+ systems.
X4 Foundations is an empire building sandbox game and quite different from ED. Outpost construction and management would be cool, but it's not a high priority for ED imo. X4 doesn't have a big development budget and that's noticeable.
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I need to address Stuart's post, here.
1) "Disrespectful?" No, as a customer who pays for a product, I'm not going to shirk from speaking my mind when the product doesn't deliver. I'm not the crazy type to obsess and do death threats or whatever, but I am going to be upfront when a developer (catastrophically) fails to deliver on its sales pitch. Elite was sold as an expansive space sim. Walkable ship interiors were literally advertised as "ready" in the Kickstarter. The words were literally "everything is ready for you to walk around your ship." This is a big part of what I paid for: the fantasy of being a ship pilot in a well-realized science-fiction world. I am quite perturbed that what we got (and keep getting) is Euro Truck Simulator in Space with metagame PvP that looks like it's getting less optional all the time.
Hence my frustration. Elite: Dangerous "THE" space game? It's barely *A* space game at this point. It's more and more becoming a Korean "free" to "play" MMO, despite its premium price tag. Half the content is a shallow grind to occupy your time in the absence of meaningful simulation.
2) X4 might be great. What it claims to want to be is what Elite: Dangerous claimed it would be years ago. I didn't like Rebirth for a great multitude of reasons, and I never much cared for the original X games, either. However, X4 is shooting for a first-person experience with a simulated economy. The promise is what's got my attention. But its execution? Time will tell.
3) Evochron's planetary flight model is lackluster. Its space-based flight model is quasi-Newtonian, which I won't say is straight up better than Elite: Dangerous' approximation, but I'd hesitate to call it lackluster. The fact that it ISN'T an MMO, yet still features reliable multiplayer, is vastly in its favor. Multiplayer in Elite: Dangerous was clearly shoehorned in, because at the time, multiplayer-anything was all the rage. To paraphrase one Ian Malcolm, they were so focused on the fact that they could that they didn't stop to think whether or not they should. Multiplayer as added to Elite: Dangerous has only hindered the game and held back development of key features, with extraordinarily little benefit. Compare this with Evochron: you get the pleasure of playing with other humans, without the core experience being utterly hamstrung by MMO-based design limitations. You just get the core spacefaring experience, but with friends (or enemies), period.
4) Star Citizen. *sigh*
5) "Development takes time." I hear that an awful lot, but when one guy is doing everything a team of 100 is doing, that just doesn't hold water. It might have taken Evochron 10 plus years, but that's almost completely a one man show. There's no sane ratio for comparison there. Elite: Dangerous has been consistently under-performing on all fronts, and there's just no rational excuse for it anymore. It's still the messy beta it was two or more years ago, functionally the same as its earliest releases, and still just as utterly barren from a features perspective.
People here are g out about exploding asteroids for crying out loud. I find this, perhaps, most distressing of all.
Hardly. The teleportation mechanic is to aid the player in managing hundreds, perhaps thousands of ships, without forcing them to pay an exorbitant fee and then sit and wait at a station for 30 real time minutes to get into the ship they want. It's not to "bypass" having a physical presence, it's to facilitate getting right to the action when you've got hundreds of ships at your beck and call. It's not a good observation - it's not even in the right ballpark.
Heck, the system planned for X4 conceptually allows for next-level craziness, like using a global command menu to give a ship an order, then teleporting into that ship to carry out that order as a mission objective yourself.
1) "Disrespectful?" No, as a customer who pays for a product, I'm not going to shirk from speaking my mind when the product doesn't deliver. I'm not the crazy type to obsess and do death threats or whatever, but I am going to be upfront when a developer (catastrophically) fails to deliver on its sales pitch. Elite was sold as an expansive space sim. Walkable ship interiors were literally advertised as "ready" in the Kickstarter. The words were literally "everything is ready for you to walk around your ship." This is a big part of what I paid for: the fantasy of being a ship pilot in a well-realized science-fiction world. I am quite perturbed that what we got (and keep getting) is Euro Truck Simulator in Space with metagame PvP that looks like it's getting less optional all the time.
Hence my frustration. Elite: Dangerous "THE" space game? It's barely *A* space game at this point. It's more and more becoming a Korean "free" to "play" MMO, despite its premium price tag. Half the content is a shallow grind to occupy your time in the absence of meaningful simulation.
2) X4 might be great. What it claims to want to be is what Elite: Dangerous claimed it would be years ago. I didn't like Rebirth for a great multitude of reasons, and I never much cared for the original X games, either. However, X4 is shooting for a first-person experience with a simulated economy. The promise is what's got my attention. But its execution? Time will tell.
3) Evochron's planetary flight model is lackluster. Its space-based flight model is quasi-Newtonian, which I won't say is straight up better than Elite: Dangerous' approximation, but I'd hesitate to call it lackluster. The fact that it ISN'T an MMO, yet still features reliable multiplayer, is vastly in its favor. Multiplayer in Elite: Dangerous was clearly shoehorned in, because at the time, multiplayer-anything was all the rage. To paraphrase one Ian Malcolm, they were so focused on the fact that they could that they didn't stop to think whether or not they should. Multiplayer as added to Elite: Dangerous has only hindered the game and held back development of key features, with extraordinarily little benefit. Compare this with Evochron: you get the pleasure of playing with other humans, without the core experience being utterly hamstrung by MMO-based design limitations. You just get the core spacefaring experience, but with friends (or enemies), period.
4) Star Citizen. *sigh*
5) "Development takes time." I hear that an awful lot, but when one guy is doing everything a team of 100 is doing, that just doesn't hold water. It might have taken Evochron 10 plus years, but that's almost completely a one man show. There's no sane ratio for comparison there. Elite: Dangerous has been consistently under-performing on all fronts, and there's just no rational excuse for it anymore. It's still the messy beta it was two or more years ago, functionally the same as its earliest releases, and still just as utterly barren from a features perspective.
People here are g out about exploding asteroids for crying out loud. I find this, perhaps, most distressing of all.
Hardly. The teleportation mechanic is to aid the player in managing hundreds, perhaps thousands of ships, without forcing them to pay an exorbitant fee and then sit and wait at a station for 30 real time minutes to get into the ship they want. It's not to "bypass" having a physical presence, it's to facilitate getting right to the action when you've got hundreds of ships at your beck and call. It's not a good observation - it's not even in the right ballpark.
Heck, the system planned for X4 conceptually allows for next-level craziness, like using a global command menu to give a ship an order, then teleporting into that ship to carry out that order as a mission objective yourself.
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X4 looks and reads super in what it will offer and perhaps even Rebel Galaxy.
Dual Universe, Spacebourne and Helium Rain will offer their versions of space-game joys too.
One thing though that I've noticed clearly by looking into all of these and probably many more in this genre to come, is that none of them seem to get it regarding the subtle and obviously not so simple things regarding the actual
flying experience and the myriad of associated things surrounding that, that ED does get without equal.
Someone asked what triggers one to quit and to come back. It's this guttural almost larger than life experience of commanding the ship from inside that leaves its mark with no blemish that brings me back.
It's after burning out on this that gives rise to frustrations which no doubt is none other than my inner mind comms to that fact, but instead of complying and stepping away, I keep at it and then project that frustration onto the game, not for what IS in it mostly, but what isn't yet there.
I think "they" know they can take the time they want to add whatever whenever knowing for whatever reasons only coders will know, that its very very unlikely this part of their game will be equaled and its this part of the game that's ever so drawing.
Dual Universe, Spacebourne and Helium Rain will offer their versions of space-game joys too.
One thing though that I've noticed clearly by looking into all of these and probably many more in this genre to come, is that none of them seem to get it regarding the subtle and obviously not so simple things regarding the actual
flying experience and the myriad of associated things surrounding that, that ED does get without equal.
Someone asked what triggers one to quit and to come back. It's this guttural almost larger than life experience of commanding the ship from inside that leaves its mark with no blemish that brings me back.
It's after burning out on this that gives rise to frustrations which no doubt is none other than my inner mind comms to that fact, but instead of complying and stepping away, I keep at it and then project that frustration onto the game, not for what IS in it mostly, but what isn't yet there.
I think "they" know they can take the time they want to add whatever whenever knowing for whatever reasons only coders will know, that its very very unlikely this part of their game will be equaled and its this part of the game that's ever so drawing.
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I just 'discovered' X4, and am anxiously awaiting it's release. While no fan of 'space legs', I can tolerate them as long as I don't have to walk long distances. If X4 delivers on promises upon release, I may be spending the majority of my 'space gaming' time in that instead of ED.
But I'm not ready to uninstall ED just yet.
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You're entitled to your opinions of course
One correction:
The Evochron series has taken 18 years (plus Star Wraith's original dev time), as per the timeline I helpfully linked in my previous post. The series' name was changed to Evochron with its release in 2005. Please don't diminish the near two decades that Shaun has been diligently working on his games.
Edit: changed your to you're (doh)
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