Someone is going to be disappointed

Horizons brought us an absolutely amazing planetary surface generation system. I hope they can pull off something similar for atmospheric planets at some point.

I'd rather see base building, BGS and PP v2 though, as we currently don't need more scenery, but more meaningful gameplay affecting the galaxy (which is why I'd still like to see a proper economy with true supply driven production of things).
 
I hope I won't be disappointed when the 2020 Q4 update shows up. I'll be thrilled at the new stuff and the lack of bugs in the update due to all of the time to work them out before that update drops. Now, I'm off to work in my flying car.
 
Horizons brought us an absolutely amazing planetary surface generation system. I hope they can pull off something similar for atmospheric planets at some point.

I'd rather see base building, BGS and PP v2 though, as we currently don't need more scenery, but more meaningful gameplay affecting the galaxy (which is why I'd still like to see a proper economy with true supply driven production of things).
Don't we already have a BGS v2. As to the economy, I'm not sure a fully player run economy will work in a game the size of ED. While I do want meaningful gameplay (the new BGS is a step in the right direction) i'm not sure that is it.

What I would like to see though is powerplay being completely revamped into something that fits much better into the BGS and the factions system to make it a more dynamic place by having the powers make more meaningful changes to the BGS, but Powerplay would end up having to be a mainly PvE experience with a bit of PvP if wanted like the BGS is. This was what I thought it would be like in the beginning.
 
I don't know how many people took to make it, but the Commander Creator took a year to develop (probably from scratch). So you could probably use that as a (light) reference.

Having said that, we don't know how many other items were in development before Q2'18; for example, atmospherics could have been in development since the Stellar Forge was created. We don't have much to go on, so it would be futile (IMHO) to try to guess what could be coming in 2020.
 
According to FDEV, the 2020 update went in full production somewhere around Q2 2018 and it is expected to be released around Q3-Q4 2020.
So we have 100 devs working at it for almost 2.5 years.

I'm not a software developer and I don't work in this business but I would be curious to know, according to the manpower advertized by FDEV, what could be feasible or not for this update considering the long wishlist of the community:

  • Atmospheric Worlds
  • Space Legs: combat and ships interactions, social areas in starports.
  • Base Building
  • New Missions (for legs and atmospehric worlds)
  • New Ships
  • New SRV's
  • Universal Limpet Controller
  • New gameplay on planets (SRV's AI)
  • New exploration contents
  • Black holes with accretion disks
  • Thargoid motherships combat scenario
  • Powerplay v.2
  • BGS v.2
  • NPC Multicrew visible and operating in cockpit
  • New graphical engine
A question - why are you phrasing this around a community wishlist?

By doing so, you conflate things which FD have said they want to do with things that they haven’t.

What’s the point in doing so? It only muddies matters.

Unless, of course, your point is that some people won’t appreciate the difference between FD’s plans and pipeline, and their personal vision/wants for the game? In which case fair point, we’ll made! ;) (But not exactly anything that’s not already known.)

With that in mind, what’s 100% certain is that some people are going to be unhappy that instead of working according to exactly what they personally want, FD have continued to develop FD’s game.

What’s also 100% certain is that some people will look at an aspect of the update and declare that there is no way it is the work of 100 devs over 2.5 years, completely ignoring:

- that the 100 is made up of a wide variety of different types of roles, and it’s not 100 coders

- the update is going to be made up of lots of different aspects (visuals, audio, mechanics, simulations, lore, etc. etc.), all of which are going to have to had time and resource spent on them

- not everything that time and resource has been spent on is going to be obvious to everyone

- not everything that time and resource has been spent on is going to be obvious on day 1 of downloading the update

- the game has a lot of different areas/playtsyles/activities and people have very different interests in the game, and that development will consequently be distributed between them, and that it’s a logical impossibility for all 100 resources to be dedicated for 2.5 years to each and every one of them.


So, with respect to the thread title, yeah, you’re bang on the money. (As I’m not sure how well that translates, to clarify, the title is completely correct :D )
 
I can honestly say I will not be overly disappointed with whatever drops in 2020 - even if what is scheduled doesn't drop until 2021. I have already got far more enjoyment and entertainment out of this game than every other game I have played (since the mid 80's BTW). Next, the people of FD have done something I can't, whilst I am very competent IT wise, what they have done is way outside of my grasp. Finally, and this is the crux of the matter, it is just a computer game, a form of entertainment. I refuse to get upset over something as trivial as a game, if I don't like what they have done I will stop playing (and coming to the forums) and find something else. God, life is too short to be upset about something like a game.
 
Frontier have just gone through the list and to ensure you get a quality update they had to drop a few things, here's whats left;
  • Atmospheric Worlds
  • Space Legs: combat and ships interactions, social areas in starports.
  • Base Building
  • New Missions (for legs and atmospehric worlds)
  • New Ships
  • New SRV's
  • Universal Limpet Controller
  • New gameplay on planets (SRV's AI)
  • New exploration contents
  • Black holes with accretion disks
  • Thargoid motherships combat scenario
  • Powerplay v.2
  • BGS v.2
  • NPC Multicrew visible and operating in cockpit
  • New graphical engine
  • Bugs... LOTS & LOTS of bugs, existing ones but more importantly plenty of new ones
  • one more half baked idea to go with the other half baked ideas we're yet to fully cook properly,
Fdev likes to consider them 'al dente'
 
{Dev Hat On}

I reckon that everything except Atmospheric worlds is possible in that list (Althought I would Love to be proven wrong).

However, there might be extensive refactoring (I.E. Making the code more efficient and easier to maintain) which might be required and THAT might have a big impact on the development speed.

{/Dev Hat Off}
I'm not saying that I could do that to-do list in 2.5 years, I don't know how difficult the Cobra engine is to develop. However going on Frontier's past performance (which dispite what has been said on this forum is quite good in IMHO), that's what I reckon they'll be able to achieve.
 
  • Atmospheric Worlds
  • Space Legs: combat and ships interactions, social areas in starports.
  • Base Building
  • New Missions (for legs and atmospehric worlds)
  • New Ships
  • New SRV's
  • Universal Limpet Controller
  • New gameplay on planets (SRV's AI)
  • New exploration contents
  • Black holes with accretion disks
  • Thargoid motherships combat scenario
  • Powerplay v.2
  • BGS v.2
  • NPC Multicrew visible and operating in cockpit
  • New graphical engine

  • Fuzzy dice
 
Going by the leaks, we will get base building and some walking around. Considering past releases for ED, I expect sort of the bare minimum implementation for that. If we get access to atmospheric planets, I expect only lifeless planets will be available.
My main gripe is that, I cannot imagine interesting game mechanics considering the current status of the game. It was the same with MC and FDev could not deliver connected experience. I'd rather have the current mechanics fixed and fleshed out, like more mission variety within certain types of missions, balance (ships/ Engineers and economy). One example to tackle both points: Assassination missions, as far as I can tell, have always the same target, that either does nothing or just flies around rather aimlessly when you enter the instance. In case of the solo mission type, you will get a Corvette as target, that is incapable of managing to hit a single if you bring a Vulture to the fight.
As long as that remains the state of the game, how could I look forward to yet another feature, that seems "non trivial" to implement?
 
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