Why can we only Land on Barren Planets after almost 5 years?

[Old Duck]

So I'll switch hats today and leave this thought with you (though others beat me to it). One could argue that JWE and now PZ are indeed Frontier working on atmospheric worlds. It's a win-win for them as a business, as they can release new games which brings in revenue while also perfecting their vegetation, weather, water, and animal technologies. All these things can then be integrated back into Elite Dangerous in a future update.

I suspect the big challenge now is to ramp these things up to a planetary scale.

 

[sollisb]

He has a point though, nobody above the age of seven or so should ask the question in the title sincerely.

Q:"Why is feature X not in game Y from developer Z?"
A:"Because every company has limited resources, and Company Z decided to spend those resources not on X but on something else instead, because they thought that was in the best interest of the company."

The end. There is nothing left to discuss beyond some incredibly immature "but I like X!!!!!", to which the only answer is: "Okay, duly noted, thanks for sharing. Again.". Usually there is the final desperate:"But if there is no X I quit!!!!!", to which the answer, again, is:"Okay, duly noted."

And this is the part that frustrates/annoys me the most about Frontier. Given a 100+ dev team and 5+ years, they've produced very very little. What they did produce was riddled with bugs. In comparison, Hello Games produced an amazing amount of content in less time and with 20 devs. Base building, feet on the ground, lush planets, various land craft, personal fleet carriers. What do we have in Elite? 30 quidrillion systems than no-one will ever see. Yawn..

 

[IndigoWyrd]

And a galaxy sim game, with a BGS game, with the powerplay game etc.

I’ve said it many a time, so what’s one more?

Elite is a Multi-role game, and just like Multi-role ships, it is perfect at being just Ok at everything.

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

And this is the part that frustrates/annoys me the most about Frontier. Given a 100+ dev team and 5+ years, they've produced very very little. What they did produce was riddled with bugs. In comparison, Hello Games produced an amazing amount of content in less time and with 20 devs. Base building, feet on the ground, lush planets, various land craft, personal fleet carriers. What do we have in Elite? 30 quidrillion systems than no-one will ever see. Yawn..

And what’s annoying is your opinion about ED’s development is wrong.
Chalk me up as a white night if you like,but your appraisal doesn’t match up with reality.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

And what’s annoying is your opinion about ED’s development is wrong.
Chalk me up as a white night if you like,but your appraisal doesn’t match up with reality.

Ok, your a white. But did we REALLY have to make is about race?

 

[Old Duck]

And this is the part that frustrates/annoys me the most about Frontier. Given a 100+ dev team and 5+ years, they've produced very very little. What they did produce was riddled with bugs. In comparison, Hello Games produced an amazing amount of content in less time and with 20 devs. Base building, feet on the ground, lush planets, various land craft, personal fleet carriers. What do we have in Elite? 30 quidrillion systems than no-one will ever see. Yawn..

LOL, this is gross exaggeration on all accounts.

 

[babelfisch]

And this is the part that frustrates/annoys me the most about Frontier. Given a 100+ dev team and 5+ years, they've produced very very little. What they did produce was riddled with bugs. In comparison, Hello Games produced an amazing amount of content in less time and with 20 devs. Base building, feet on the ground, lush planets, various land craft, personal fleet carriers. What do we have in Elite? 30 quidrillion systems than no-one will ever see. Yawn..

HG managed to create a game I am absolutely not interested in while FDEV managed to create a game that is among my favourite games of all times. YMMV.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Well, there is a difference between saying "I dont like X" or "I'd prefer Y" (which is totally fine), and the frequent 'Devs are lazy because Game X isn't my dream game!!!". Those folks should really try to do it themselves for a change. :/

 

[Viajero]

As I already said multiple times I would not compare FDEV with HG.
HG is silent but has been delivering big contents every year since 3 years. After NEXT (in-between the silence period you refer to) they released another 2 big updates (Visions and Abyss) plus dozens of small patches to fix and add small contents.

FDEV is silent.

So as I said previously, we'd better wait 2020 for any conclusion

You seem to be selectively ignoring all the Elite updates during the same periods.

 

[marx]

My hope is that they are working on a hybrid Height map/Voxel system, so that there are explorable cave systems and planetary mining opportunities.

Personally, I'm a realist instead, and I expect Frontier to put in as the same amount of effort they did into the next expansion as they did into the game since the Return.
A pleasant surprise would be the same effort as they did into Horizons' launch. But things have changed since then, and they have other projects to work on - like the unknown new IP game coming at the end of this year.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Personally, I'm a realist instead, and I expect Frontier to put in as the same amount of effort they did into the next expansion as they did into the game since the Return.
A pleasant surprise would be the same effort as they did into Horizons' launch. But things have changed since then, and they have other projects to work on - like the unknown new IP game coming at the end of this year.

What I expect and what hope for can be very different.

 

[Old Duck]

HG managed to create a game I am absolutely not interested in while FDEV managed to create a game that is among my favourite games of all times. YMMV.

I just fired up NMS to see what all the hubbub is about, played it for about 10 minutes, shut it off, and now I'm loading ED to run some BGS cargo missions before work.

One thing NMS does get right is shadows. Shadows look very good in NMS!

 

[Ian Skippy]

You seem to be selectively ignoring all the Elite updates during the same periods.

Saying FD is silent is indeed a bit too much, but HG added Big Features to the game (multiplayer, VR, base building) whereas the only comparable update, in my mind, is non-atmo landings. All the other updates since were certainly a positive thing to me, and they really add up when you stack all of them together, but not as game-transforming as we'd hoped. Next Era is supposed to be the Really Big Uberpatch. The kind that NMS has received, and the kind that SC always seem to miss. I am with Sensei in that Next Era will be decisive, and it will depend on whether it is again a transformative patch or a collection of small new thingies and QoL updates. The latter is fun, but not enough in the long run.

Still, I am reasonably positive, but we'll have to wait and see.

 

[sollisb]

And what’s annoying is your opinion about ED’s development is wrong.
Chalk me up as a white night if you like,but your appraisal doesn’t match up with reality.

Which part did I get wrong ?

 

[Viajero]

Saying FD is silent is indeed a bit too much, but HG added Big Features to the game (multiplayer, VR, base building) whereas the only comparable update, in my mind, is non-atmo landings. All the other updates since were certainly a positive thing to me, and they really add up when you stack all of them together, but not as game-transforming as we'd hoped. Next Era is supposed to be the Really Big Uberpatch. The kind that NMS has received, and the kind that SC always seem to miss. I am with Sensei in that Next Era will be decisive, and it will depend on whether it is again a transformative patch or a collection of small new thingies and QoL updates. The latter is fun, but not enough in the long run.

Still, I am reasonably positive, but we'll have to wait and see.

I guess that is a bit subjective. For example Underwater NMS could be also considered just more of the same except some ambient filters and lower gravity. I personally do not care much about NMS underwater implementation.

And conversely some of the Horizons updates for Elite or the recent ones that I may find great you may find underwhelming.

At the end of the day the patch notes for all those tell the story that both dev teams seem to have been hard at work and selectively ignoring one side is not really fair.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

HG managed to create a game I am absolutely not interested in while FDEV managed to create a game that is among my favourite games of all times. YMMV.

Ye, until they ruined it with Elite engineeRNG concept, a concept found on the dumpster pile of mtx and monetisation blueprints.

 

[sollisb]

The thing with NMS is it's a game, where-as Elite is trying to be a sim and a game, and failing at both. As the Old Duck said above, for people interested in running another same same mission for some reason, it's great. It has it's place, but for me, it's a failure, frustratingly so, as it could have been so much better.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Saying FD is silent is indeed a bit too much, but HG added Big Features to the game (multiplayer, VR, base building) whereas the only comparable update, in my mind, is non-atmo landings. All the other updates since were certainly a positive thing to me, and they really add up when you stack all of them together, but not as game-transforming as we'd hoped. Next Era is supposed to be the Really Big Uberpatch. The kind that NMS has received, and the kind that SC always seem to miss. I am with Sensei in that Next Era will be decisive, and it will depend on whether it is again a transformative patch or a collection of small new thingies and QoL updates. The latter is fun, but not enough in the long run.

Still, I am reasonably positive, but we'll have to wait and see.

Personally the reason why I see people thinking FDev have done very little is because all the updates have been lots of different small things when in reality what they should have done is release one big thing in each update. I think if you look at one of the updates (but not the two small ones in beyond), there was an awful lot of small bits and pieces. They were big updates. Just comprised of lots of small things. I would have much preferred if Fdev concentrated on one aspect to make it fully features. For instance the passanger missions/SLF update. They should have concentrated on one or the other, not both. Neither are fully featured because they are trying to add to many different things at one go. EIther concentrate on the SLF and a proper NPC system or passanger missions, making them a fully featured update.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

The thing with NMS is it's a game, where-as Elite is trying to be a sim and a game, and failing at both. As the Old Duck said above, for people interested in running another same same mission for some reason, it's great. It has it's place, but for me, it's a failure, frustratingly so, as it could have been so much better.

I disagree that it is failing and that it is a failure, but I do agree that it has potential to be much better then what it already is.

 

[Old Duck]

As the Old Duck said above, for people interested in running another same same mission for some reason, it's great.

For me, that "some reason" these days is the BGS, which is like a galactic game of Risk. One might argue that picking up a chess piece and placing it on a different square is both boring and repetitive, but it's the bigger game behind the physical action that makes chess interesting. Oh, and I happen to love flying my Drifty McDropship running cargo, as long as there's a purpose to it beyond just earning credits. The BGS has given me this purpose.

Elite Dangerous is actually a pretty amazing game once you understand it fully.

~ Harvey Dent