2020: Do you think its going to be worth the wait?

[Sylow]

Define "waiting". I still play ED for what i find enjoyable: flying spaceships. That part is fun for me, despite FD trying to put more and more things in game which i don't like but just accept. (PP, engineers)

As long as i enjoy flying, i do so. When i don't feel like it, there are other games out there. It's not like i am locked into ED and have no other options available. When the big 2020 expansion comes around, i'll take a look.

If it turns out to be fun: awesome!
If it is no fun but can be ignored: also perfectly fine.
If it neither is fun nor can it be ignored: other games will also take my money.

It's as easy as that.

 

[Enderby]

I’m intrigued to see what it’ll be but I’m not particularly optimistic.

Could be something that sounds good in theory but has the usual anti-fairy dust sprinkled all over it.

 

[Ian Skippy]

With good planning and research you know exactly what you can and most important what you can't do before you start a new project, at least we did at the company I worked for.
We sometimes had to disappoint certain clients because they were asking for things we knew we couldn't deliver technically. Sometimes we knew we could deliver more then what the customer envisioned too.
When you start a project and half way through you find out you can't realise it then you've got a serious problem regarding planning and/or research, I'm not even talking about the wasted resources and funds.

I would love to see the spacesim you guys coded! Honestly though: we're all adults here, what works in one project or industry doesn't work in another. In game development there are always things that don't work out as expected, and where at some point you decide to postpone or cut it.

Which is a very simple fact gamers often simply refuse to accept. And that leads to the 'raging nerd' phenomenon, whether we talk about people upset about postponed carriers, or the visual downgrades in The Witcher 3. They thought they could optimize it enough to make it work in the final game, they couldn't so they downgrades the graphics.

It happens. It doesn't mean they are terrible at their job. I've had jobs where the error margin was almost zero, I've had jobs where huge risks were common. Neither experience is relevant when discussing game development. And at some point it would be nice if people could grasp that, and it might entice devs to be more open.

 

[mojonaut]

If past performance is anything to go by then no, it'll just be a mess, a bunch of stuff no one asked for that's half baked, half finished, badly designed and badly implemented.

 

[Bryan K]

If it’s legs and base-building? No, definitely not worth the wait. Tried those on NMS and was unimpressed.

 

[Dutchman141]

I would love to see the spacesim you guys coded! Honestly though: we're all adults here, what works in one project or industry doesn't work in another. In game development there are always things that don't work out as expected, and where at some point you decide to postpone or cut it.

Which is a very simple fact gamers often simply refuse to accept. And that leads to the 'raging nerd' phenomenon, whether we talk about people upset about postponed carriers, or the visual downgrades in The Witcher 3. They thought they could optimize it enough to make it work in the final game, they couldn't so they downgrades the graphics.

It happens. It doesn't mean they are terrible at their job. I've had jobs where the error margin was almost zero, I've had jobs where huge risks were common. Neither experience is relevant when discussing game development. And at some point it would be nice if people could grasp that, and it might entice devs to be more open.

To bad I can't talk about what we worked on, it was under government contract that's all I can say.
Still if Fdev ran into technical difficulties halfway the project, that shouldn't be an excuse to leave so many features half baked.
Imho took Fdev way to many features they wanted to implement leaving them with to few resources in order to fully flesh them out.
Quality over quantity or vice versa, it's a matter of preference or priority.
I know what I prefer.

 

[Muetdhiver]

That +1. If FDev delivers legs or atmospherics with the same level of bare minimum content like for the initial horizon release, it'll flop like a fish out of the water.

I mean, MC, wings and SRV not working together seamlessly is a good argument against unbridled optimism.

Deep core mining was fine, but subsurface mining is still due it's abysmal payouts. This kind of half arsed deliveries are all over the place and take years to get fixed.

Otoh sound design always delivers the goods and the flight model is still amazing, so there is that.

 

[Pablo-Diablo]

It is the END of 2020. Meaning December. Two years, not one! No, it is not worth the wait but do we have a choice?

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

If it’s legs and base-building? No, definitely not worth the wait. Tried those on NMS and was unimpressed.

I will be surprised if its implemeted anything like NMS. I expect something very different. NMS is 90% legs and 10% space flight. I would expect ED to be 50-80% space flight and 20-50% legs depending on what you are doing.

Basically I expect it will be down to implementation. I hope it's good.

 

[Barking_Mad]

I have been saying for a while that for every update, FDev should have concentrated on one aspect. For instance SLF. It should just have been about SLF and NPCs. Then they release an update for passanger missions/Hub and the whole thing centred around them instead of little bits of everything for each update.

Every update has been pretty big (apart from the two small ones between 3.0 and 3.3), its just that they had lots of disjointed half baked features instead of concentrating on one big feature. It seems to be a recurring issue wth ED.

I am sure there would be less complaining if we had fully baked but less features in the game.

Yes, but no. Maybe...maybe not. If you put in fundamental features albeit not fleshed out you give yourself room to change and adapt them. If you go the whole hog and create fully fleshed out features you risk programming and designing yourself into a corner if you want to change them and how they interact with other parts of the game. Probably easier on a game where you've created x iterations already, there's no real template here.

Gameplay always comes last and for good reason.

I suspect some areas of the game will see fairly large iterations in 2020, others not so much.

FDev's 'problem' is being so ambitious with such a relatively small budget and team. GTAV was a single city and it took 1000 people 5 years. When people want spacelegs cities and missions, is that what they expect? Maybe 50% of it?

So yes, quite agree that FDev could have narrowed the scope and produced a much smaller feature set with more detail by now and it could in many ways have been a 'better' game. That said it would probably have inversely increased the requests for the features not in the game. Somewhere in the universe there's a forum complaining about them

All that said there's stuff they'd probably do differently if they could and even from a layman's point of view there's obvious mistakes. But as David said himself the game was always "hopelessly ambitious". I'm glad they went down that route. Others will complain there's 'no competition' and FDev have it easy until someone 'does it better'. They might be waiting a while....

2020 can't come soon enough!

 

[dubsdj]

I'm in the same boat.
I got 2000 hours in this, unlocked all engineers to level 5, got billions sitting in my account, what this game needs it content, something to engage players. BGS isn't content, sorry. Thargoids could have been so much more, but i guess that ship has sailed. 200 billion star systems, plenty of room to add actual content, something for the players to do... yet here we are, talking why we are leaving the game.
Last content update was December 2018, next one will be "late" 2020. That's 2 years of nothing, really. Looking at other MMOs, they release fresh content every few months. Elite however doesn't get anything really. Mission board has been gimped to avoid board hopping, the text walls on the mission board are not content, doesn't matter what's written there, and unless one puts on some Roleplay, this game has pretty much run its course.
An even sader part is, that this game pretty much requires a Netflix account to bridge the boring loops with entertainment. I'm talking long distance travel, endless (unnecessary long) SC times, hunting for HGE etc. In the beginning it's interesting and new, when you're doing that for 3 hours because you need the mats then it's just mind numbing and dull.

I really love the game, but I think the spark has fizzled for many of us and people are moving on. They want entertainment, which the game with its static nature just doesn't provide. People have been able to look past it, and focus on the non-static parts, but eventually that novelty has worn off, and all that's left is the static bits.

I don't play so much these days, I have done everything and not sure what else to do. I still log in from time to time and do a couple of trade journeys but that's about it. Needs a team dedicated to just work on interesting things to find during this long period of waiting for a big update. I'm only talking about small things like adding new missions, new artefacts and changing station graphics from time to time to keep it interesting to play.

 

[Vandaahl]

If it’s legs and base-building? No, definitely not worth the wait. Tried those on NMS and was unimpressed.

Yeah, I get the whole space legs neither... I played NMS for a couple of hours and was bored of walking around in no time. I wonder, if they indeed implement is, how long it will take before the first genius asks for 'walk assist', or an auto-pilot for walking to your ship.

For the topic, waiting for an update in late 2020 is about the same as watching paint dry AND deteriorate again. So yeah, go for it

 

[Vandaahl]

lol, double post...

 

[Ian Skippy]

To bad I can't talk about what we worked on, it was under government contract that's all I can say.

Don't worry about the NDA. I am sure we can all agree that if there ever was an example of an entity widely renown for always delivering on time, on budget and with impeccable quality it is the government.

 

[milligna]

Yes it's totally a problem for a growing company that is doing massively well continue to work on and release multiple titles like they have for decades.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

I don't like KFC, and the last few years have seen nothing on the menu I liked. I am scared that they will continue to work with the same ethos. I hope they have amazing food next year, but I am not too sure. Maybe I won't like it. I am really keeping my fingers crossed that I am wrong!

Oh wait, I don't. I just don't eat there. KFC will survive. I will survive.

The thing is, ED is not a KFC in the gaming world...

 

[psefergr]

Most of you seem to forget that we were supposed to have the new Ice planets without paying for them.Also Fleet Carriers were supposed to be free.Why no one here complains about it ? Perhaps this is one (Ice Planets) is part of the major update we are expecting and RTX Support (one can hope). Also what's the point that FD allowed us to map non land-able planets and giving us the details of surface materials if not for preparing for future content (perhaps atmospheric landings). I think we are close enough to that!

 

[Crimson Kaim]

To be honest, no. The game is in a borked state and there needs to be alot of improvements coming in order for me to come back. Especially on the PvP side, which now has seen "nerfs" thanks to the removal of CGs, the ignorance towards powerplay and general absence of any counteracts against combat logging, cheating and utterly bad netcode (fighters cause lags).
Content is the last thing I desire right now. Quality is what is needed urgently. I'd prefare any 2D retro space shooter over ELite at the moment. The sole reason it still is installed is because I have put so many hours in it already which means I have a large set of oppotunities, though all lack in reasoning and attraction.
A basic thoughtflow is me considering firing up Elite but then I question myself what I would like to do there. The answer is always PvP as everything else is boring or unchallenging or I have done all the other things like trading, unlocking stuff etc. already. Even PvP sometimes is boring. However, then I remember I can't play PvP because there is no reason to do PvP in Elite, secondly there is no place and third, there are barriers like insatncing, combat logging, cheating, netcode, imbalances and many many more that prevents me from enjoying the game and make it worth my precious time.

Lastly, the devloper team and its information flow play an important role for me to play a game for long. I want to know wheather or not it is worth to invest my time into a game and for tha tI need to be infromed about future plans. With Frontier's strategy of sharing next to no information this is not possible, another major downside.
This leaves me with the conclusion that, after checking out the latest update and playing all of what it had to offer, Elite is not worth playing at the moment because of bad quality and thus waiting for more content that most likely will be in a bad state too, is not worth waiting for.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Most of you seem to forget that we were supposed to have the new Ice planets without paying for them.Also Fleet Carriers were supposed to be free.Why no one here complains about it ?

Lol, because when someone says they'll try to give you ten things for free, gives you eight and tells you the final two will hopefully come later a well-adjusted adult doesn't complain about the possibility that they may not get even more for free.

 

[Enderby]

They'll be free (cos they said) just the other stuff cost the dollar