That depends on the yacht.
Why can we only Land on Barren Planets after almost 5 years?
- Thread starter Cosmo
- Start date
Don't think anyone is doubting E: D's potential.
But then you have to balance that against what they've actually delivered, over the course of the last 5 years. I therefore have doubts whether they have the skills in-house to pull it off.
Would love nothing more than to be wrong though.
Back from when ED looked like it really was going to be a truly deep and involved affair, with some bar raising technical development. I'd suggest the first year of the game seemed to try to go down that path. But then things like Powerplay began showing the path/ethos longer term, before then for most of the past four years, us having a litany of generally either shallow or half baked design choices.
I do hope end of 2020 sees a return of that desire for FD to raise that bar!
Until Horizon was announced end of 2015 the forums were filled with raging people because the first year updates were very minor with zero information on any major features coming. Remember many thought ED would launch with a 'secret patch' containing major new features. When that didn't happen, and 9 months after launch we received some new ships, wings, CG and such people were sure we'd never see any serious major features. Then they announced 2.0 and said we'd be landing on non-atmo planets within months.
Right now we're back to the period before 2.0 was announced. A long stretch of fairly disappointing minor updates and no major announcements at all. It all depends on what Next Era is. If it is good, it'll be like the 2.0 era again, where everyone was stoked to the eyeballs.
ED is like a minor form of bipolar disorder, where people in a manic state forget they ever were despressed and cant imagine it ever happening again and visa versa.For me, Wings seemed like a good logical next technical step, allowing people to network togethor for the no doubt more involved gameplay coming up. eg: To Wing up to engage in the far more involved combat scenarios that were undoubtably going to be released soon - But even 4-5yrs later we're still waiting for that! And then Horizons was just a great technical step forwards.Until Horizon was announced end of 2015 the forums were filled with raging people because the first year updates were very minor with zero information on any major features coming. Remember many thought ED would launch with a 'secret patch' containing major new features. When that didn't happen, and 9 months after launch we received some new ships, wings, CG and such people were sure we'd never see any serious major features. Then they announced 2.0 and said we'd be landing on non-atmo planets within months.
Right now we're back to the period before 2.0 was announced. A long stretch of fairly disappointing minor updates and no major announcements at all. It all depends on what Next Era is. If it is good, it'll be like the 2.0 era again, where everyone was stoked to the eyeballs.
But from then on, for me personally, more often than not, almost every update since Horizons has been shallow, ill considered, or worse still counter productive (eg: Engineering).
I'd truly hope next years update is some really well design deep involved bar raising stuff. But, it's the same designers and management who have given use the past four years of stuff, so I'm not getting my hopes up. I really wouldn't be surprised come its released a huge amount of the community raise their eyebrows at most of it and ask (like they did for multicrew) "why did you do that?" Fingers cross I'm wrong!
Exactly.
David said a lot of things about E
and how he wanted it to be and what he didn`t want in game. The thing is, very few of what he said has materialised so far and many things that at this point are surely here to stay for good are exactly what he described as bad.... be it different coloured height-map planets, black markets accessible to everyone, or even overly long boring sections of a game... He criticised all of those before, but in the end that is exactly what we got.Even in this Ted video, which used to fill me with hope during the good old beta days, he describes BAD procedural generation with this sentence :
"[...]but there is also BAD procedural generation, we see cities going on forever, we see things where you can see the patterns that are too simplistic, its to obviously computer generated [...] essentially it`s bad art if you like"
Well unfortunately that sentence fully applies to what we have in Elite dangerous. Even after 5 years, most of the stations are the same, there is no difference between alliance, Feds and the Empire territories, All the planets are just simple height maps with different colouring, mostly just 1-2 colours plus canyon generating routines, crater generating routines and mountain generating routines, the asteroids are just a couple of different man made modells scattered around, all the crates and barrels on stations and outposts aree allways in the same exact places and with the same colours, no randomisation there, same with "windows" on stations which are just repeated textures with easily spotable patterns instead of having randomised procedural textures
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While one can argue about the merit of individual updates (tinkering with ships via engineering is what greatly extended EDs life for; making wacky builds with small ships is tons of fun to me!) I think everyone has more or less the same ideas about 'major' vs 'minor' features. I agree that 2.0 was the only 'real major' feature being added. Atmo planets and spacelegs would be others, basebuilding as well though I never considered it much. Based on the limited information I have, I expect Next Era to be on par with Beyond (2.0-2.4); in other words at least one major feature and a pile of smaller ones. If it is less, I will be... disappointed.
Spot on...
And for me even the Mining 2.0 feels like a worryingly poor design. With a nigh on clean slate we having a set of clunky mechanics which needlessly makes little/nothing of mining "hotspots" and their depletion. And then the mining mechanics themselves just seem needlessly unbalanced and ill-considered. And then add on the financial payout/rewards for mining and how well conceived those are (or not).
So if this recent self contained update (Mining 2.0) can't even be designed and delivered such that's it's a solid asset to the game, what do we expect from the same individuals given a larger scale development?
Ultimately, management are far too often greenlighting poor/odd/shallow choices. The designers are far too often producing questionable half baked outcomes.
Like you, I hope the next big update proves me wrong (too)...
Full production started while Beyond was still in development so:
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FDEV has got 2 teams:
Team 1: with a lot of experienced developers for full production projects
Team 2: with less people, most of them new employees with scholastic experience and interns managed by some more experienced guys, for small contents and updates.
ED was developed by Team 1. After the initial game release FDEV created Team 2 who kicked-in for smaller updates while Team 1 was working on Horizons 2.0.
After the Horizons 2.0 release, Team 2 kicked-in again and Team 1 moved to other projects (theme parks, jurassic bla bla).
Since then we're left with Team 2.
During 2018 Team 1 apparently started the full production of the New Era, so ED is bound to stay with Team 2 for another year and a half.
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You'll find most people would disagree strongly with that, and that the mining 2.0 in ED hands-down beats the mining in NMS, X4, Star Citizen, Rebel Galaxy et cetera. While it is one thing to be critical or ambitious, if you consider the best an entire genre has offered in its entire existence to be 'worryingly poor' and 'ill-considered', maybe you've reached the point where you are expecting unreasonably much. This is not Mining Simulator 2019, and yes, you can always imagine something cooler. There is not a single thing in any computer game where I cannot conceive it to be better. But if that is the bar you've set, I can promise you you will be persistently and consistently disappointed for the rest of your life.
If that is why for 3-4yrs we generally got shallow, "is this really the outcome of 100+ people," additions to the game, but means next years will see some finally bar raising development, great!
For me, there was always talk from FD suggesting there were teams working on ED ahead of the curve, but there was little/no indication that was the case. So very very much of it has just seemed hand to mouth with literally the impression short development cycles, and last minute content changes and ommissions, which doesn't give the impression of features being developed well ahead of the curve IMHO.
Undoubtably Mining 2.0 is an improvement and has some great aspects. But consider:-
- Why are Hotspots not more meaningful and dynamic and why not make their suppose depletion more meaningful and interestomg? Instead systems are filled with Hotspots, and the supposed depletion mechanics do little if anything. A small amount of work/consideration could have meant Hotspots were more interesting and dynamic, such that finding a new one would have some importance/reward. As it is, why bother going anywhere other than the same Hotspots over and over and over? Consider if a Hotspot showed a value for a Hotspot's "Reserves" ranging form 0-100% depending on how much CMDRs have mined/depleted it, and that affected the amount of the associated materials found there! And if it took weeks for these figures to rise again. Suddenly things become more meaningful and dynamic. All due to some very simple mechanics.
- The PWS is all but "here's the new mechanics" scanner which is all but pointless except for trying to highlight the next Motherlode.
- Which brings us to, why for most miners is mining little more than Motherlode -> Motherlode -> Motherlode. Why aren't the new mechanics more engaging and tiered, with a motherlode being the icing on the cake, rather than the cake followed by cake followed by cake ? eg: Why are mining rarely even bothering with Sub-Surface missiles? Why is the balancing so poor and ill considered that one whole tier of the mining mechanics is all but pointless?
- Module overlode! Could they really not have been rationalised/conceived a bit more logically?
- Why do the new mechanics not offer multicrew gameplay?
- And underlining all these questions about balance, doesn't the void opal price hike feel like a effort from FD to try and get mining financially rewarding via a rather hacky unbalanced method?
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Probably because we still believe in it. We have hope for the best. Which is dangerous, because than the disappointment might be greater.Right now we're back to the period before 2.0 was announced. A long stretch of fairly disappointing minor updates and no major announcements at all. It all depends on what Next Era is. If it is good, it'll be like the 2.0 era again, where everyone was stoked to the eyeballs.
Sounds a bit like how they start new locations for restaurant chains. Put in their top chef for a year, then move him/her on to next project while replacing him with the inexperience low-pay chef. Customer experience awesome the first year, then it dips. We've had that experience a few times here in our city.
It goes on until the numbers have dwindled to a point that it calls for action, and new, better chefs are brought in to replace/help the cheap ones. And the quality goes up again. Until next time...
I fully agree... FDEV rose the bar with the initial release of the game and with Horizons 2.0 then something went wrong... I see 2 main problems here:
1. FDEV left the initial vision of the game to develop something else
2. The manpower and the resources dedicated to the game development after launch have been largely underestimated.
Asteroid mining, sure.
Surface mining... well, not so much. NMS have 1) hand mining of multiple types of targets and a large number of materials, 2) mining vehicles, 3) portable mining units, 4) powered mining units for resource hotspots, 5) material storage with pipelines and electrical wiring, 6) mineral, gas, energy mining.
ED'ssurface mining: 1) shoot a generic rock.
Oh absolutely, but that has nothing to do with mining 2.0. NeilF was specifically talking about that, and if he thinks that is so terrible he is bound to be constantly disappointed. Surface mining is absolutely bare-minimal in ED for sure though.
I think they were safely way ahead of the competition. Seen this happening many times in business. Companies thinking they're the king of the hill with their product until someone cheaper and better suddenly comes out from a competitor.
Yeah. And I do like the asteroid mining in ED. The only thing that I think could improve is if we had mining ships where you took asteroid in the ship and broke it down for 100% return. Think Ishimura in Dead Space.
3. Considering we had the same complaints about 1.0 and 2.0 (and everything in between) it's likely that some people just aren't easily pleased.
To be fair, if the next big thing isn't 'exciting' I'll probably be just as disappointed as everyone else. But claiming that everything from 1.0-2.0 was received well by the entire community would be an alternative fact.
Ha, that would be cool but we'd need a supersized Panther Clipper for that, a new docking procedure, and to make asteroids non-static. The latter would itself be a whole new can of worms (but pretty cool on general principle, it would make combat even more fun with the rocks sumbling against each other!). I honestly doubt we'll see something like that happening, but its a fun idea.