Is ED nearing the end of its lifespan?

[Terry Daniels]

If I knew for instance, that I'd never be able to land on Earth back in 2014 - I would not have purchased the game.

I never really expected Earth like planets for a long time but I didn't buy ED until Horizons dropped with the first planetary landings. It was so soon after release I kind'a expected more planet types to drop year by year*, not once every 7 years and still not even clouds or weather, never mind water / volcanic activity or even forested / scrubland area's... and still just basic heightmaps so no caves, overhangs etc and whilst the updated scatter rock tech looked better at first, seeing the same copy / paste rocks kind'a destroyed even that illusion.

* That was on me for believing in Fdev.

 

[Darth Ender]

I never really expected Earth like planets for a long time but I didn't buy ED until Horizons dropped with the first planetary landings. It was so soon after release I kind'a expected more planet types to drop year by year*, not once every 7 years and still not even clouds or weather, never mind water / volcanic activity or even forested / scrubland area's... and still just basic heightmaps so no caves, overhangs etc and whilst the updated scatter rock tech looked better at first, seeing the same copy / paste rocks kind'a destroyed even that illusion.

* That was on me for believing in Fdev.

I dont see the point in adding something like a heavy atmosphere planet with weather just to have a smattering of RNG wrecks and a base or two that looks like any other on other planets.

I'd like to see some evidence that elite would utilize new environments by utilizing the ones they currently have before being upset or disappointed that the new environments dont exist.

Currently I dont see that evidence in the past 6-7 years of horizons being released. We have a near infinite amount of "maps" to "play in", if those aren't doing it for you, an additional map where you do the same stuff as in the existing isn't going to scratch the itch.

Unless your goal is just screenshots.

 

[babelfisch]

I never really expected Earth like planets for a long time but I didn't buy ED until Horizons dropped with the first planetary landings. It was so soon after release I kind'a expected more planet types to drop year by year*, not once every 7 years and still not even clouds or weather, never mind water / volcanic activity or even forested / scrubland area's... and still just basic heightmaps so no caves, overhangs etc and whilst the updated scatter rock tech looked better at first, seeing the same copy / paste rocks kind'a destroyed even that illusion.

* That was on me for believing in Fdev.

I don't know if the state of the game would be any better if we had lots of different planets to land on but not other gameplay changes, additions and improvements since 2015. I guess not. I also don't know if mentioning the state of the game is appropriate.

 

[Demonlord79]

The better the PC the better Odyssey should run in theory. But that is not always the case. I have an i7 6600k CPU and Nvidia 1080Ti GPU, plus I only play in VR (HTC Vive). That spec is 5 years old now but I am quite happy with how Odyssey is running at the moment. My main interest is Exploration.

You would think, huh?
Frontier has come a long way with Odyssey. My previous platform was running the B450f with a R7 2700, regular 1080 but I've never seen anything with VR, yet. Next purchase I suppose. I love exploring for the beauty they have done. Bet it's pretty amazing with VR, ya?

Your platform should run smooth on Odyssey surface content now, Devs have done a pretty good job optimizing it.
But your right with the performance though, weird, doesn't make much of a difference. It's like Frontier put an in-game limiter or something with the load times but you won't hear me complaining..lolol
I'm happy as hell to see Elite up and running good again...

 

[Old Duck]

and still not even clouds or weather, never mind water / volcanic activity or even forested / scrubland area's... and still just basic heightmaps so no caves, overhangs etc

This is SO hard to do procedurally. People expect billions of Star Citizen like planets, which I think is unrealistic both for Elite and Star Citizen.

Sometimes I think Elite went the wrong direction by making planets landable in the first place... I kinda wish they focused on the space side of the game first. But then again, I spend most my gaming time on worlds with water, weather, forests, and volcanic activity (and lots of caves), so that itch is scratched for me.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

This is SO hard to do procedurally. People expect billions of Star Citizen like planets, which I think is unrealistic both for Elite and Star Citizen.

Sometimes I think Elite went the wrong direction by making planets landable in the first place... I kinda wish they focused on the space side of the game first. But then again, I spend most my gaming time on worlds with water, weather, forests, and volcanic activity (and lots of caves), so that itch is scratched for me.

IMO landable planets are a good thing, but they needed to be more fleshed out. There wasn't much to do on uninhabited planets besides doing stunts, collecting materials and perhaps climb a mountain or two.

 

[Old Duck]

IMO landable planets are a good thing, but they needed to be more fleshed out. There wasn't much to do on uninhabited planets besides doing stunts, collecting materials and perhaps climb a mountain or two.

People LOVE their landable planets, so I know my "perfect the space game before making the planet game" stance is going to be very unpopular, and more importantly, it's irrelevant now that the horse is out of the barn.

Another unpopular view of mine is that if you are going to have landable planets, then the Star Citizen way is the better way. I'd rather have a single hand-crafted solar system that feels truly alive and HUGE rather than 400 billion solar systems that feel empty and small. Even in the very simplistic Space Engineers, I've literally spent months exploring a single planet, something I would never do in Elite, because what's the point?

HUGE DISCLAIMER - this is not a critique of Elite, it's rather just my own personal preference, which is very niche and not at all something Frontier should listen to. But it is one of the reasons I have an eye on Star Citizen these days..

 

[Darth Ender]

You say it yourself and all in all it boils down to the fact that their biggest mistake was listening too much to their players instead of building and developing on their original vision (assuming such a vision existed in the early beginnings). But good luck with SC, because this game is much more about immature players' dreams and unfulfillable promises... I hope all the best for you and that you don't fall out of the frying pan into the fire.

Beyond just copying outdated gameplay mechanics around a 30 year old game but with an infinitely larger map and better graphics and multiplayer, i dont think there really was a vision.

it's not like players asked to have poor network behavior and no community content and no social UI or content to leverage the multiplayer stuff.
It's not like players asked to have things like cqc (which was aimed at scratching an itch in a way that had no hope to succeed) or wanted powerplay to be left unfinished (so that the entire mechanic and potential of it was rendered impotent)
Players didn't ask for an exploration mechanic that stopped at taking screenshots.
Players didn't ask for 400 billion systems and countless worlds without any gameplay to utilize them. But they did buy into the hype fdev made around having them.

That was all fdev's plans ...so i'm not sure what listening to players did to take things down the wrong path. Fdev's scope of listening to players seems to be limited to some basic balance considerations of features already developed and in the game ...features that they dont tell anyone about until it's too late to do anything about them except tweak or just turn off.

 

[Darth Ender]

Not so fast, young padawan. Old Duck mentioned landable planets, and that was very much demanded by many players (or what they might have perceived as the majority).

that was outlined as a thing fdev wanted to do from the start. it's part of the kickstarter sales pitch, them wanting that.

the roadmap of development of elite has been following a set plan put into place years ago and leaked online and it's been pretty accurate minus some delays. It's not really following a user demand, unless fdev figured out all of the user's demands years ago and just can't help themselves but follow thru.

players flocked to the game because fdev said landable planets (and a full size galaxy and mysteries and danger) ... fdev didn't get the idea from players demands. It's what they sold to the players to get them here.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

ED dead? Nah. I just received an update for Portal

 

[Jack Winter]

the roadmap of development of elite has been following a set plan put into place years ago and leaked online and it's been pretty accurate minus some delays.

Please, do you have a link to the set plan? I'd really like to see that, especially if it's pretty accurate!

 

[Mersozz]

Honest question: Is there a space flight simulator that captures the look, sound, and feel I have playing ED?

If so, I want to buy that game. Because I can count on one hand the games that have come close came to ED (and two of them weren’t space themed):

TIE Fighter
Red Baron 3D
IL-2 Sturmovik

 

[Old Duck]

Honest question: Is there a space flight simulator that captures the look, sound, and feel I have playing ED?

If so, I want to buy that game. Because I can count on one hand the games that have come close came to ED (and two of them weren’t space themed):

TIE Fighter
Red Baron 3D
IL-2 Sturmovik

If you take the time to customize the controls (including deadzones, etc), X4 Foundations can come close to Elite. Just don't judge the game based on the first ship you fly, because the smallest ships are too squirrelly, but starting at the heavy fighter and larger, they feel much more realistic IMO.

This assumes you are focused on the SPACE aspect of a space flight simulator, as you can't land on planets in X4.

 

[Darth Ender]

Please, do you have a link to the set plan? I'd really like to see that, especially if it's pretty accurate!

The leaked multi-year roadmap I was thinking of is in regards to late 2018+ across multiple titles, not just elite. just google elite dangerous roadmap leak ..it's basically the first results.

Granted, it does say base building in addition to space legs and foot thargoids ...but I'd call that a victim of deciding to enter maintenance mode than a change in development direction.

Prior to that, roadmaps were not hidden or secretive and basically spelled out for horizons and released by fdev on purpose. So the future has been determined for the game years in advance since the game has been released, with the upcoming year(s) (season) of updates being known and listed out ahead of time.

No period of player voting or comment. Just here's what's coming up in the next year or two ... based on a more general plan outlined by fdev from the start.

But the roadmaps have been held to (with timing issues involving anything post horizons roadmap) for the most part.

it is interesting to see that in 3rd quarter 2015 fdev stated that the game was expected to last for 6.5 more years. Which would put it around 2022 (with a delay due to covid making it probably closer to 2023). So i think we're right on target for end of franchise. Just as planned in 2015.

 

[Terry Daniels]

Not sure about the EDTracker but Evochron Legacy has FA off mechanics and basic VR - built by one man tho' and the graphics... well, I bought it but am too shallow to get past the basic graphics* and sound, plus built like SC with about 30 to 50 systems with static stars (refuel but dangerous if you get too close), asteroids (some with cave systems you can fly into and 'find' stuff) and planets (most landable with variable gravities / flight mechanics & weather systems which can be mined from the ship).

* Space itself is pretty beautiful but the ships / space stations / cities look like basic shaded polygons

 

[Rainbro]

Fair enough. But just imagine what would have happened if they skipped that plan. And I was just commenting a certain statement from Old Duck, no more, no less.

I mean, they more or less did skip them. The Horizons version of planetary landings is practically a placeholder that matches quite closely what Braben once described as a very disappointing implementation. Odyssey is that with a coloured sky.

 

[Jack Winter]

The leaked multi-year roadmap I was thinking of is in regards to late 2018+ across multiple titles, not just elite. just google elite dangerous roadmap leak ..it's basically the first results.

Thanks! It wasn't the first for me, but google quickly found it.

Then it does indeed look that what they are excited about might indeed be on foot thargs, I was halfway thinking it was a player dream turning into persistent rumour. And seeing that we have all these bases we can walk around, it does indeed seem like base building would be relatively easy to tack on.

That's cool, I imagine that they'll keep working on the technical issues and add the above two features. Thanks that's some cool stuff to look forwards too.

 

[Demonlord79]

Day one from the vanilla Frontier has always announced that they were going to implement planet landing as Horizons was already in the works and had a VERY successful release with minimal flaws and VERY high reviews. I truly don't think they were going for space legs but there are quite a few reasons for space lags, "as the community wanted them" and "ship interiors" just to name two of several reasons for Odyssey. Which the race to release ended up as a train wreck as was released as an Alpha version, basically, without any Beta testing as the year of play was quite similar to a Beta from players, as most have agreed that was sort of the quick beta plan.

Fleet Carriers were the last thing before Frontier dumped Horizons as Carriers were meant to extend fleets together while moving thus eliminating the cost of transferring ships as we had before, but the cost was meant for dedicated players, IMO anyway, so the price of Carriers was so high. Not sure I'd wanted to see that but understandable as a squads point of view anyway.

Now I do believe Odyssey was a rush, thus the terrible release of an Alpha, as proven, due to the reasons mentioned above. But I do know that Frontier never really had any intent for space legs do to we already had an SRV for planet-side travel. But this is all speculation as Frontier never gave a "real" road map per say, just a very large space simulator.

But this is what we've got now so Frontier will push forward as the cancelation of Consoles will relieve more resources to improve Odyssey, hopefully no further work done on planets will change and come back into the picture. Personally, I would like to see Frontier get back into its original plan as a space simulator, BUT with more roleplay content as just the precenting of slight Guardian/ Thargoid threats.

But this is all just my personal opinion of course.

 

[Rainbro]

I haven't seen this leak, but does it really point to base building? That would be fantastic and also something I always considered the most obvious thing for the next DLC since Odyssey arrived. Here's a big fat vote from my side (FWIW). But since when does FDev fulfil my biggest dreams? So, from that point of view... No. Can't happen.

It did, and it was backed up by the leak being correct on all other aspects as well as source code on Frontiers website referring to some sort of Arx integration with base building. However, Frontier have since said they have no plans for this iirc, so it was dropped.

 

[Old Duck]

But this is what we've got now so Frontier will push forward as the cancelation of Consoles will relieve more resources to improve Odyssey,

I wouldn't bet money on that... I wish you were right, but there's no evidence yet that this is indeed the case. If anything it implies that Odyssey is now "as good as it gets", and if you want decent performance with ultra graphics, you'll have to go buy that $2000 PC.

Though I will agree that if there's code already in Odyssey that has yet to be activated, say Thargoid FPS gameplay, new SRVs, etc, those things can now be activated since a console release (player parity) is no longer holding it back.