The point is that in the kick starter video Braben listed several expansions that he wanted to make for the game, one of those being "ship interiors", specifically walking around in the ships, seeing the damage, the flames, the cargo flying out, etc. He further stated that they have designed the ships and structured the code to allow this to happen. I think that we should take his words at face value, and not the musings of forum armchair developers..
are ship interiors never coming?
- Thread starter Azakel
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funnily enough whilst the bugs make me roll my eyes a bit I can't think of any that annoy me as much as they annoy you..... the big one for me was the attrocious performance at launch (even then it was a few of the usual suspects telling me it was fine and it was my pc at fault that irked me as much as the game).I'd say that it's completely normal to stuff things up while programming. Ideally things would get fixed by more experienced programmers reviewing junior programmer's code, by using tests validating that the code actually does what it's intended to do, by the quality control team, etc. I think Elite is such a huge codebase that's it's probably not possible for the quality control team to actually test everything.
This would normally not be a big problem if the company promptly responded to bug reports and actually fixed things. We can all speculate about why this process isn't taking place, but only Frontier itself knows the reasons why.. As players we can unfortunately only suffer the consequences and try to report the bugs, useless as that seems to be.
To me this is really the game's big failing, I really don't care that it doesn't implement my dreams.txt, nor do I care that the speed of development is slower than I'd like. But all the bugs can really get my goat and sometimes I feel like throwing my mouse through the monitor or simply to rage quit and delete the game. But as a glutton for punishment I keep coming back...
whilst it's still not up there with horizons performance I can live with that now so the bugs are not gonna make me quit (hell I stuck with 1st encounters , now there was a broken elite game!!)
but many of the bugs were found in beta and FD categorically stated not to worry they were not in their build which they were going to launch with.
anyway I am about to watch moonfall so HNY. (that , Pig and John Wick it's been quite the eclectic film few days)
Alpha... There was never a beta, and the release made the alpha look amazing!
Was Arf & Co. misled by the management, or did something happen to the version they were supposed to be launching?
Lol, this was probably just about a year after I started playing Elite, and somehow I managed to miss all the drama. I can't say that I noticed the ARX bugs either, but maybe I didn't play exactly when that happened and I didn't frequent the forums much either. However what makes me lol is that I just browsed the above thread and realized that the forum and the discussions haven't changed a single iota, all that has changed are the participants!
I remember it was more piers who was.. at least defining the alpha as alpha. They maybe have even been a passing reference our slight hint to not worry because it’s an alpha by someone somewhere. Not sure. But I remember piers doing most of definition for odds ea.
HNY y'all.
Odyssey is the base template for all future features that would require onfoot aspects. This would include ship interiors, among other things. Though it would be surprising to me, considering the interesting reception to the onfoot aspect of Odyssey, if Frontier did ship interiors before other aspects of the game, like gas giants and denser atmospheric planetary landing, though I would be happy to see a continual iteration of onfoot features, such as we saw with emotes, sitting & Fleet Carrier interiors.
To misrepresent a community manager's opinions on the matter of ship interiors to give it more authority than the published Kickstarter plans and stated intentions of the founder of the company is disingenuous at best and deliberately peddling misinformation at worst.
Of course, either way the jesters will be critical of why x came before y and just as critical if it was vice versa - there's no way to win with them. New Years resolution for all: don't let Elite's development be dictated by jesters who ultimately want to be able to tell you 'I told you so'.
As to some other tangential points:
Unreal 5 can't cope with the map scale of Elite. I'm sure Frontier will continue to invest in Cobra as it is the backbone for all of their games and I think David Braben is very capable of ensuring that it progresses as it should to incorporate some of the excellent technology and features that Unreal 5 brings - eradicating LOD issues would be of a huge benefit to any game, not just Elite, and possibly be the ultimate solution to handling the scale of Elite when it comes to overall performance, currently, and for future developments like procgen (or possibly AI generated) cities in the future. However, that has to be a mid-term development goal at best as I'm sure that's a heck of a lot of work to be done under the hood.
Odyssey's release state was affected by COVID, possibly as the main disruption. I can't talk about spaghetti code, my literal 2c worth is that I reckon some of the tricks used to keep the 3.8 codebase performing so well have become Achille's heels when it comes to further development, interdependencies such as the HUD colors being tied to other aspects of the UI would be something I would point to in regards to that. In general though, Odyssey's 4.0 codebase is an overall code-refresh + new lighting, so (to me at least) it also stands to reason that this process would entail a new round of optimization and have it's own sets of bugs to deal with. Hopefully, 4.0 has fixed a lot (most) of what was problematic with the 3.8 codebase, though, again, perhaps some of the parts of the code that are now 'cleaner' also lose the performance advantages that 3.8 had, hence an overall upping of system specs. I don't mind that, I hope that the graphics tech of Elite continues to iterate to keep up with modern standards, which also means higher specs.
Overall, enjoy the game for what it currently is, there is no other game like it, and likely won't be. I wish Frontier, and the Elite Team specifically (minus the Thargoids), all the greatest success in the New Year. o7
Odyssey is the base template for all future features that would require onfoot aspects. This would include ship interiors, among other things. Though it would be surprising to me, considering the interesting reception to the onfoot aspect of Odyssey, if Frontier did ship interiors before other aspects of the game, like gas giants and denser atmospheric planetary landing, though I would be happy to see a continual iteration of onfoot features, such as we saw with emotes, sitting & Fleet Carrier interiors.
To misrepresent a community manager's opinions on the matter of ship interiors to give it more authority than the published Kickstarter plans and stated intentions of the founder of the company is disingenuous at best and deliberately peddling misinformation at worst.
Of course, either way the jesters will be critical of why x came before y and just as critical if it was vice versa - there's no way to win with them. New Years resolution for all: don't let Elite's development be dictated by jesters who ultimately want to be able to tell you 'I told you so'.
As to some other tangential points:
Unreal 5 can't cope with the map scale of Elite. I'm sure Frontier will continue to invest in Cobra as it is the backbone for all of their games and I think David Braben is very capable of ensuring that it progresses as it should to incorporate some of the excellent technology and features that Unreal 5 brings - eradicating LOD issues would be of a huge benefit to any game, not just Elite, and possibly be the ultimate solution to handling the scale of Elite when it comes to overall performance, currently, and for future developments like procgen (or possibly AI generated) cities in the future. However, that has to be a mid-term development goal at best as I'm sure that's a heck of a lot of work to be done under the hood.
Odyssey's release state was affected by COVID, possibly as the main disruption. I can't talk about spaghetti code, my literal 2c worth is that I reckon some of the tricks used to keep the 3.8 codebase performing so well have become Achille's heels when it comes to further development, interdependencies such as the HUD colors being tied to other aspects of the UI would be something I would point to in regards to that. In general though, Odyssey's 4.0 codebase is an overall code-refresh + new lighting, so (to me at least) it also stands to reason that this process would entail a new round of optimization and have it's own sets of bugs to deal with. Hopefully, 4.0 has fixed a lot (most) of what was problematic with the 3.8 codebase, though, again, perhaps some of the parts of the code that are now 'cleaner' also lose the performance advantages that 3.8 had, hence an overall upping of system specs. I don't mind that, I hope that the graphics tech of Elite continues to iterate to keep up with modern standards, which also means higher specs.
Overall, enjoy the game for what it currently is, there is no other game like it, and likely won't be. I wish Frontier, and the Elite Team specifically (minus the Thargoids), all the greatest success in the New Year. o7
at this point whilst I would welcome interiors I would b happy with confirmation that ANY new paid expansion is coming which was on the list of future expansions.
However IF a community manager misspoke then all it would have taken was someone else at frontier to clear that up ...... so until we see otherwise I don't think it is so easy to assume he was wrong .
that said.... your digs aside, I like your optimism and I truly hope you are correct
your complaint about the same players complaining regardless of what FD do.... this may be true of a small number of players.
after all I suspect some of the players saying you can't hold FD to things they said years ago are the same players who were telling players not to be inpatient and that FD should not be judged yet because their goals were going to take years to be realised.
However IF a community manager misspoke then all it would have taken was someone else at frontier to clear that up ...... so until we see otherwise I don't think it is so easy to assume he was wrong .
that said.... your digs aside, I like your optimism and I truly hope you are correct
your complaint about the same players complaining regardless of what FD do.... this may be true of a small number of players.
after all I suspect some of the players saying you can't hold FD to things they said years ago are the same players who were telling players not to be inpatient and that FD should not be judged yet because their goals were going to take years to be realised.
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That's a planetarium, not a game.
indeed...... but one does wonder if it would be possible to use the space engine universe and build a game in there....... No idea of feasible but if it was I reckon I would buy it.
No, not like those. Star Citizen isn't officially released.
I think it had something to do with Chris Roberts (?) taking Microsoft's money and making a Wing Commander film or something, then the actual game wasn't ready for release so he went it alone and is spending forever "perfecting" it. With no publisher t push him, it will go on being pre-release forever.
It was FDev who said about the internal module placement modelling for the pentrative damage lines-of-fire.
The Braben video musings were of course "to infinity and beyond" if he got way more than the initially projected Kickstarter funding, there were levels of what could be done depending on what levels of funds were achieved. At that stage it was a hawked game that had been turned down by other publishers hence the need for KS. We can't expect every "we'll maybe attempt this if we get a billion pounds" off-the-cuff breeze-shooting guess to be a commitment. Indeed, it would be madness to do so.
A lot of people seem to ignore the "perhaps" inherent in all speculative R&D. But people who paid for the Kickstarter got what they paid for; I know I did.
I guess it would be possible but it wouldn't result in the perfect imaginary dream game. It would have just as many shortcomings as any other space game. Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen, NMS, X4, Eve, etc. they all do some stuff very well but are lacking in other areas. In the end each game is a compromise and I am not sure the perfect game can even exist, either because everyone wants something different or because we don't even know what we want ourselves.
Every few years I want to play Skyrim. There are so many mods that I can turn it into my personal dream game. So I spend days or weeks adding all the different mods until it's perfect. But somehow it's not fun and I quit playing after a few days. I believe if we had some magic machine that creates our dream game it would be the same. There are many questionable design decisions in Elite Dangerous but in the end nobody here or somewhere else managed to create a better space sim that ticks all the boxes. Otherwise we wouldn't be here.
I agree with you...... the only thing I would say is (most) people here are not hoping for the dream game.... they are hoping for confirmation that features are still on the roadmap which FD themselves have talked about.
IF anyone is guilty of projecting elite is going to be the dream game.... it is Frontier. (but I would say FD didn't , everything they talked about to me sounded ambitious but plausible).
IF anyone is guilty of projecting elite is going to be the dream game.... it is Frontier. (but I would say FD didn't , everything they talked about to me sounded ambitious but plausible).
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Yeah. While given the fanatical positivity some people have, im guessing there are a number of Star Citizen refugees now firmly planted in elite.. i've never touched that game, probably many more like that too. Apparently they have a 20 year backlog on jpg ships they've sold... really its safer not to get involved.
I backed SC Kickstarter too. Elite is the one which excited me the most but back in the day I was a fan of wing commander and privateer so I had no problem kicking over some money for that (far less than elite however I just went in at the £60 or $60 (I can't remember) level.
personally I think that game is finally starting to come together. it has issues I don't like,.and a couple of design changes which did make me try to get a refund on it (and was told to go suck an egg) bit it is finally getting something like a game.
until progress is set in stone I won't be playing much however, having.my toys taken away from me whilst those who buy stuff with cash keep theirs is somewhat offensive to me.
plPersonally I think SC has over promised, if there.isna game obviously based on unrealistic dreams that is it.
but this thread is about elite. I always thought the elite pitch was more grounded in reality however and I did mostly believe the sales pitch
Therapy will help... a little...Careful, I've seen your videos.
Looking at which expansions and patches have done well and which haven't, then I think part of the problem is that "chargeable feature" and "popular feature" might be mostly separate.
The core of ED, back in 1.0 (and for a broad definition of "exploration", back in 1984 too) - cargo, combat, exploration - is basically good (give or take personal taste about what sort of activities you want). If it hadn't been the game probably would never have got as far as Horizons. Obviously after an extended amount of time, the question comes in as to why you're bothering to trade another 500t - you get credits for it, which you already have enough of, and the same of anything done too often is going to get boring.
So to keep people playing they have three broad things they can do:
1) New types of activity - mostly easy to make chargeable
2) New variations on the core activities - can be chargeable if there's an obvious "gate" to apply (e.g. you can trade; now you can trade at Horizons surface ports) but would people pay for it?
3) New reasons to carry out existing activities - mostly difficult to make chargeable (though the original Engineers implementation perhaps?)
The first one is easy to build an expansion around, but even if it's good, lots of people just aren't going to be interested. Odyssey has pretty marginal appeal to people who just aren't interested in walking around outside their ships, and that's still true now that its quality issues have been fixed up to the "no worse than the rest of the game" level. Improvements to the core activities or the reasons to do them - Beyond, Fleet Carriers, the restart of the storyline, U14 - have generally been fairly popular, but also generally very difficult to charge for (they could probably have made Fleet Carriers a mini-expansion - for ownership but not usage - if they hadn't already said it was going to be in Beyond for free)
Odyssey seems to be following to a large extent the same sort of curve as Horizons [1], just more pronounced: very shaky initial release (the original pricing was confusing and unpopular; Engineers caused massive ragequits from some player groups; Multicrew was an all-round disaster) with below-expectation sales ... followed by a few years of tuning (Beyond) and stability (almost a year without updates between Fleet Carriers and Odyssey) which gives people time to forget how bad the initial release was - or never see it because they joined years after.
So I'm not ruling out that in, say, 2026 "everyone" will be doing a bit of on-foot stuff as part of their routine, things will generally be going pretty well, and then they'll release Ship Interiors and it will be - again - such a disaster that the forums will be absolutely full of "no-one ever asked for ship interiors, how can anyone believe that this is what we want in a game about flying spaceships, where's my Panther Clipper, Frontier doesn't understand explorers, etc. etc." posts but by 2030 or so they'll be fixed up and everyone will be just quietly using them a little bit.
[1] See also No Mans Sky, X Rebirth, X4, etc. Massively unfinished at release and poorly received, after a year or two of patching and fixing got to the "generally pretty good" stage. Maybe it's something about the space genre?
I'm an original generation Star Citizen refugee, having backed both games in Kickstarter in November of 2012. I backed Elite Dangerous first, since I learned about it first, and then Kickstarter did the whole "Here's other projects you might enjoy." Clicked on Star Citizen, and I was like "Oh, here's a project being led by Chris Roberts! I liked Wing Commander and Privateer. Let's take a look.
"Hmm... most of the technical work has already been done, unlike ED... not charging me for Alpha access, unlike ED... extremely limited planetary landings right out of the box, unlike ED... Sold! It'll be good to have something to keep me occupied until ED gets their first paid update under their belt. Since the hard work is already done, they're far more likely than ED to release on time, and ED won't be close to FE2 levels of gameplay for a long time, SC will give me something to do until ED develops into something other than a modern remake of Elite 1984."
Oh, the irony!
Am I optimistic about Elite Dangerous' future? Yes and no.
Yes, in the sense that assuming Odyssey's bungled release didn't kill future planned paid updates, I do expect Frontier to continue developing the game to include everything that was on their roadmap from Newsletter #29... eventually. As in a paid update every three to four years eventually. As long as developing the game remains the least bit profitable, Frontier will keep developing the game.
No, in the sense that I'm assuming that Frontier's bungling did kill future updates, but I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised if I'm wrong. And even if Odyssey didn't kill the next paid update, Frontier's bungling of that update likely will. Because Frontier and bungling seems to go together when it comes to this game.
And it's not like they're not competent when it comes to game development. ED is still a good game that I enjoy playing. It's just that this game used to be so much better, and if Frontier had had anyone experienced in managing an MMO, this game would've remained so much better. A more experienced MMO manager wouldn't have allowed reward inflation to kill their economic sim, changing trading from an interesting exercise in multiple market manipulation into a single commodity ABA hauling. A more experienced MMO manager wouldn't have listened to the Veruca Salts of the community, and filled in the game's depth, increasing the potential grind.
And of course, Frontier continues to ignore the value of a player-testing environment for avoiding the most game breaking bugs in release candidates. They continue to stick to their original decision during the Kickstarter to monetize player access to a testing environment, treating it as a sneak peak marketing gimmick rather than a vital step on the road to release.
I think that's the wrong dimension of the matrix. Frontier could sell whatever they want if they fully baked it. New activities, variations of core activities, new concepts which scatter rewards in existing activities hint hint. I don't think odd is any more marginal or difficult to sell than other pillar.. its just too underbaked.. even update 14, biology is a placeholder, ship interiors don't exist.. imagine the result from a different universe where odd was logically whole? Yeah i think its a different fundamental problem, baking length not cherry selection.
Also keeping forums happy is the worst idea ever. As a tangent I find it strange that only white knights seem to care if the forums are happy. When playing the game that doesn't exist. Its all about the integrity of the game as we well discuss. Sure the forums are great for smoothing down the edges (complaints, bug reports, suggestions), but at the highest level it sounds crazy to suggest forums as more than just another stakeholder. Having said, if frontier were able to produce content, the forums are not that dramatic. If frontier were like hello games we would have run out of features to ask about years ago and invalidated the concern that way.
Lets see how starfield goes. The current space games were from the pre cyberpunk era. See what happens.