Elite Dangerous Release date discussion thread.

[Axtor]

The short answer is.....

The short answer is.....No.
The long answer is hell no.
The eloquent answer: There is no longer term content at the moment. There isnt that, "oh i wonder whats there"-feeling. The whole Galaxy is just planets and stations that very quickly
start to feel very samey. When you find a good trade route you just pump the credits from that, end of story. There are a few ships that take time to aquire but what then? Yes ofcourse there
is the group of people that say "you build your own story". Well.....no. There is only so much interdicting a man can do. There is only so much that can happen in ones imagination.
FD needs to give us more tools to really get that pokemon feeling --> i need that next upgrade, i want to reach the otherside of the galaxy. There isnt any of that to be had at the moment. Give us NPC that we can hire to do trade runs at a cost. Give us enormous battle setpieces that require a group of friends to tackle. Give us a sensible way of grouping. Give us a fast UI experience. Give us a usable Galaxy map. Give us waypoints.

Yes ofcourse this game will grow over time, thats a given. But the question here is that should they release in 2014. The answer is no. Please dont.
The edges of the game is there, but the meat...is slightly missing. Dont let the wider public be disappointed. Dont just feed the dream, realise it...

"If you build it, he will come." - Field Of Dreams

Axtor

 

[Colonel Kenney]

I think that is where content comes in.

Missions in certain hotspots in the galaxy where there are conflicts. To make you feel like you are making a difference AND a larger profit.

 

[Axtor]

Yes. I truly hope there is more content incoming before end of 2014. Something to hook people in.
We just dont know yet if that will happen before launch. I want this game to succeed, but it needs that long term hook.
Im just not seeing it at the moment. Im hoping for the best though.

 

[Colonel Kenney]

How about FD fueled and manned conflicts where they get to fly the dreadnaught and man the turrets and ships and we the players need to pick a side ..

Sort of like in MMO's the GM led events. Problem with that is that you can only get 32 people in an instance. So you'd need there to be a bunch going on.

 

[Mucka]

Yes. I truly hope there is more content incoming before end of 2014. Something to hook people in.
We just dont know yet if that will happen before launch. I want this game to succeed, but it needs that long term hook.
Im just not seeing it at the moment. Im hoping for the best though.

Yes this is very much a feeling with many backers, the content simply isn't there yet and as mentioned the only ones saying yes release it are those that are impatient to earn credits to upgrade to earn more credits to upgrade to earn more... you get the picture.

Other than just content and having a persistent universe there are so many small things missing that could make a huge difference to the experience that are very easily implemented.

I mean I look at a spread sheet to find out my reputation with a faction, is it good bad, meh? How did it happen, when and do I care?

How about I carry out a mission for the Federation against the alliance and pull it off well. I get an incoming message via the coms thanking and letting me know that any time I am in Federation space they'll have my back. Next time I am in Federation space I get jumped by some by alliance mercenaries who have been hired because of my actions and I send out a distress call to the Federation (because I can as my rep now allows it). I'm told via comms two Fed fighters have been rerouted to help but ETA is 3 minutes. A desperate dog fight ensues as I hold out for the cavalry which duly arrives and the day is saved. I get a message over the comms, "The Federation looks after its own commander" and after a victory roll the two Fed fighters jump away.

Or I could look at a spread sheet and see reputation "good"

 

[toomutch]

Voted no. There are still too many hangs / freezes / ctd's for me. Don't mind the odd minor glitch - every game has them at v1.0 - but I get a freeze or CTD every few hours of game play. Every time I restart after a crash, I end up losing credits having to pay fines for incomplete missions. I had a freeze tonight, restarted and when it started up I was already flying inside the station so was immediately fired upon for trespassing. Lost the viper so now have to pay the insurance for getting it back. I don't mind too much at the moment as I realise we are meant to be testing, not playing, but if the game is released in this state it is going to hack a lot of people off very quickly.

I absolutely love this game (been playing since late 1980's on a 8086 processor pc with mono monitor and 20meg hard drive) so I am happy for them to wait another couple of months to get it right.

 

[Borgkube]

Should they release polls are silly.

 

[BigDaddio]

Do you really think they are showing you everything?

I was in a beta for another MMO and they never let us see more than about 1/4 of the content. We never saw the final artwork etc. Literally up to launch. The beta was to test what they wanted us to test and they would structure it so. People were screaming the same crap they are screaming here. This is not ready, this should not launch, we cannot do game mechanism X. This is beta and if you think this is all they have done then you are fooling yourself, or you really do not understand how games are made.

 

[Babalawo]

Voted no. There are still too many hangs / freezes / ctd's for me. Don't mind the odd minor glitch - every game has them at v1.0 - but I get a freeze or CTD every few hours of game play. Every time I restart after a crash, I end up losing credits having to pay fines for incomplete missions.

This. Speaking as a very new player (only had the game for ~48 hours) I have been extremely frustrated by the game-caused losses I have experienced. Losing to a pirate = fine. Losing because the game mechanics dropped my connection/bugged out and decided I was a criminal/stuttered me into a wall != fine.

 

[Mucka]

Do you really think they are showing you everything?

I was in a beta for another MMO and they never let us see more than about 1/4 of the content. We never saw the final artwork etc. Literally up to launch. The beta was to test what they wanted us to test and they would structure it so. People were screaming the same crap they are screaming here. This is not ready, this should not launch, we cannot do game mechanism X. This is beta and if you think this is all they have done then you are fooling yourself, or you really do not understand how games are made.

People who you accuse of "screaming crap" are going off what they know and the current facts, not what they think they know without qualification - that would be you.

 

[Axtor]

Do you really think they are showing you everything?

I was in a beta for another MMO and they never let us see more than about 1/4 of the content. We never saw the final artwork etc. Literally up to launch. The beta was to test what they wanted us to test and they would structure it so. People were screaming the same crap they are screaming here. This is not ready, this should not launch, we cannot do game mechanism X. This is beta and if you think this is all they have done then you are fooling yourself, or you really do not understand how games are made.

Ofcourse they are not showing everything. And like a previous poster said, im basing my comments and feelings on the here and now, not on the maybe and future probabilities.
Beta is Beta, but as FD has stated their intention to launch in 2014 that means this Beta is drawing to a close soon. Not much to test anymore....and unless there is something very major in the
works, this is what we are getting.

 

[Ned Starwind]

I love this game, and it's most likely gonna be released early. MY only hope is that the early release doesn't hurt it too much. As I believe that this game is gonna be great in 1 years time or even less.

 

[Vandaahl]

This is the last time I acknowledge your existence.

Please focus on the issue, not the person.

Read the topic of the title. Read some of the posts. Read some of the lists and lists of unfinished features and make your onions on the topic known.

If you start to feel uncomfortable about questioning the claims you make, then refrain yourself from making them. They aren't backed up by any of the information that can be found in this thread (as far as I'm concerned), and reading your rather defensive reply to my question implies you pretty much agree to that. Are you the only one allowed to ask critical questions? If its really that obvious I'm trying to derail your thread, just report it to a mod and let them sort it out.

If my question was a bit too direct, then I would even apologize for being blunt, but, having read your critical replies to - for instance - the weekly news letters, I guessed you could take a poke or 1. The mere point I was trying to get across was:

Do you really think they are showing you everything?

So all in all, I really don't understand why you had to "act accordingly", but since I made it to your ignore list, who am I talking to anyway...

 

[orfeboy]

Final Release Blues

So they tell us the game is nearly finished... or at least it is nearly ready for release. But just how finished is it really? Well I have been playing the Beta 3 now for the past few days and am pretty impressed with it. There is a lot more to do in the game now and the improvements have gone a long way to the enjoyment factor. The game still seems heavily balanced towards testing with a low level of interdiction etc. but I suspect that will change upon release.

There are still issues with the game however that if this game does ship by Christmas (Two months time...) need to be addressed. This will make the difference between a fantastic game and what might very easily be a flop that will be torn to shreds by the press...

First there are the bugs. while it is true the game is running smoother now and at what seems at lower hardware specs than before it still has a long way to go. The system map is really broken and causes crashes more than any other feature on my machine. Stutters and server drops abound. I suspect this will all be sorted on release so I am not too worried about this.

Second there is co-op development. This is still very buggy with players unable to see each others ships and there is still no direct microphone communication. This needs to be addressed. Text communication is a great alternative for those who do not want to talk to weirdos on the net etc. but for those who want to threaten another player and create some of the fantastic PVP face offs we see in the likes of 'DayZ' that create so much uncertainty, Frontier are missing a truly excellent opportunity here. Again I believe this will be sorted before release.

Third we come to the biggest bugbear of them all - missions. I truly hope that the so called missions we a re seeing on the bulletin board are not the mission system. I have no real problem with the bulletin board if it is simply that and that alone. A little extra thing for you to do in the game to earn a little extra cash. But the way I see the game right now is that what we have is 'Elite shiny', what I mean is that it is Elite and not Elite Dangerous. It has all the elements of the original game but done better and with better graphics but that is all. A generic mission system that consists of pressing a button in a space station where you don't even bother reading it because you already know what it says and flying to another station and pressing another button is a joke in a game that is being released in what is nearly 2015! This sort of system might have been OK in the 1980's but not anymore.

The game I associate most closely to this game on a mission basis is GTA although that might seem strange. If you look at the original GTA3 that was released on the PS2 even the missions outside the main storyline had animations, mini story threads of their own, unique mission mechanics and locations etc. At present the current mission system has nothing that distinguishes it from the commodity market. It is despite being a seperate screen just another commodity market that you click a button on and fly to another system.

Now there may be two reasons as I see it why we have not seen proper missions in the game so far. The first is that Frontier have been developing these from the start with a crew sitting in the basement coding away all this time to be taped onto the game at final release. Not wanting to spoil the buzz of release by showing us all these missions before the game goes live (and I truly hope this is the case), or alternatively the mission system is as we have seen it and the next two months will be spent fixing bugs and adding new space ships!

This is 2014 and this game will be ripped to shreds by the press and the fans if it does not have a galaxy that feels alive. Right now while I applaud the structure and feel of the game it still feels empty. If they can just get missions running which lead you in different directions in the game where you see holographic people dictating the missions to you or actual NPC animations I don't care. We need politics, we need an crime underworld, we need cold war, we need spies, we need stealth, we need covert operations and so on which actually feel like they matter in the game.

If they can provide this and not just fob us off with 'it's coming after release' then this game will be truly great. If we are left with that stupid bulletin board I might aswell be playing Elite on my Atari ST. for the same level of immersion.

I really hope Frontier have got this, I really do...

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

" full public release happening in the current calendar quarter"

Frontier has now raised total funding via Kickstarter, the crowd-funding website, and its own site of over £7.5 million from over 140,000 backers in order to develop Elite: Dangerous.

http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/12138381.html

It also says Beta ending with 22nd November, so I hope on Friday we will get full disclosure about any futher releases between Beta and public release.

 

[Ryanextreme143]

I can understand your point Orfeboy, i to feel that they should add more things like you have said, however i personally think they have more than what we are expecting. I think they will update the game in a big way for Gamma ( if it comes ) and release. It will be like having a collection of toys on xmas, having no idea where to start and what to play with first . If they don't put bigger elements in then they soon will, as we all know they are working really hard non stop to bring out content. Just have to wait and see really .

 

[OldSchoolPlayer]

That's absolutely fantastic news!!!

Is that the "real" Neil Armstrong, CFO that flew to the moon?

That's awesome if this game has such backing!!!

- OldSchoolPlayer

 

[grae3107]

Great news.

 

[S~P]

Nice to hear they got so much funding, should get plenty of updates then.

 

[Vandaahl]

Great news indeed! It also makes me wonder, "what will gamma be?". Will it be "this++" (which would still be fine to me), or have we been testing place holders?
Anyway, exciting times ahead