Atmospheric Landings is Not Coming Early 2019

[Lightspeed]

Funniest post and comment of the week right here:





You must be new here! Or perhaps English isn't your main language and Google Translate messed up. But FDev have never UNDER promised anything! They are hype-central, full on marketing machine for even the littlest things. They constantly over promise + over hype every single release, every single feature. Not saying this is good or bad as certain other companies do it as well. Just had to point this funny post out sorry!!!

OT: certainly don't have interest in listening through a podcast or whatever to simply hear more blah blah. If it's real information FDev needs to learn to tell customers here on their forum / website, and stop the reveals being made at Reddit or other sites.

For those debating 'atmospheres' it truly was said to be part of the one planetary release and said long before Horizon marketing started. FDev only ever talked of one planetary landing DLC; they never said anything about a plan for 'airless' release first then others being supported later. The plan for splitting the feature only came up during the Horizons development where they likely realized they couldn't do more than airless roids. Doubters can simply go through the archives themselves and learn about the true history here. Horizons changed during development to not include what was stated and planned; it was scaled back drastically same as the release product was (no offline mode, half the ships, no... content!, etc.) to just lifeless, easy to do rock-scapes that still seem to challenge even the mightiest GPUs for some reason (bad coding). Note the one post recited here where FDev mentions cities, hunting big game, etc., implies atmospheric planets even though it didn't say 'atmospheres' as that word came up after the reveal that planetary landings would be limited, quite limited.

They under promised on the Type-10 ...... it proved to be a more useful all-round ship than we ever imagined .... and that spoiler ..... phwoaaaah !

EDIT - And it was Cosmo who discovered it first, hidden in one of the screen tabs, way before FD showed it in their video.

 

[Quester91]

As for space legs, Ed had nothing to announce.

I couldn't care less about atmospheric planets, all I want is space legs and more gameplay in any shape or form they can deliver it. So that little bit at the end of your post is just another "pfft, knew it" on my part.


Now that both spacelegs and atmo are out of the equation I have zero ideas about what they could actually charge people for in the next paid expansion/update/module or whatever you want to call it.

 

[Ian Skippy]

The thing is, with Beyond already planned for 2018.

They KNOW roughly what is being build until decemeber 2018

They also know exactly what is NOT being build until 2018, and how much progress.




Sure, basic atmospheric worlds (thin atmosphere with no life) are easy to implement, or even those jovian planets.

But then, tornadoe's, dust clouds, some form of weather patterns, etc etc. can be rendered, sure, BUT it's got to work ONLINE with the other players.

SO weather need to be generated by stellar forge server-side so ALL the first client instances, and subsequent instances are rendering the same weather effects.

So that a stellar forge/server issue for seeding/generating weather for that instance (AKA the whole star-system in supercruise)
Then it's networking issues, (informing the clients, and then the clients informing the other clients).
THEN it's a rendering issue, right?


Ship legs is more closer in that respect it has all the core mechanics in place, faces, clothes, ship interiors, multi-crew.
It's just actual playable content, missions, interaction onboard the ships that need to take place.

So if that's the FIRST thing they wish to work on post the already booked up 2018, then yeah, atmospherics won't be coming EARLY 2019. Ship-legs will chew up the focus.

- As I've said many times,
Ship legs should be a free-for-all extension of the game.

Station legs, Elite Dangerous: Mercenary, should be developed as a stand-alone experience, that doubles as a seamless expansion to all expansion owners.
That way, it's a seperate First Person RPG Experience, hand-crafted to work with the background sim, factions, in all the same way. But you are stuck in the corridors of the station. Booking passage on an NPC ship, or a player ship, continues the corridor experience as you wait for the next station (coninuing the corridor experience). Sure you can hop in a fighter, or gunner. But until a mercenary buys a ship-permit, (horizons or Season1) they can't fly or own an actual space-ship.
Vice-versa, pilots are not allowed to board-stations until they buy the Mercenary expansion.

That and full on planetary landings where you can walk around and catch those dinosaurs is LOOOONNNGGGG way down.
(thankfully they can copy/paste from Jurasiac Park )

They repeatedly claimed to have already been working on this with separate teams for years. I'm not gonna guess anything anymore. Lets see if the new stuff announced tomorrow will be any fun.

 

[Ian Skippy]

For those debating 'atmospheres' it truly was said to be part of the one planetary release and said long before Horizon marketing started. FDev only ever talked of one planetary landing DLC; they never said anything about a plan for 'airless' release first then others being supported later. The plan for splitting the feature only came up during the Horizons development where they likely realized they couldn't do more than airless roids. Doubters can simply go through the archives themselves and learn about the true history here.

LOL, as usual you're just making stuff up to support your frustrated ranting. [haha]

We do intend to release small, free updates after launch, but expansions that include significant new features and content will be charged for separately. For example, our current roadmap is to add (in no particular order):
Landing/ driving / prospecting on airless rocky planets, moons & asteroids
Walking around interiors and combative boarding of other ships
Combat and other interactions with other players and AIs in the internal areas of star ports
Accessing richly detailed planetary surfaces
Availability of giant ‘executive control’ ships to players

The roadmap explicitly mentioned non-atmo planets as an expansion, and this was before gamma was even released, more than a year before Horizons was announced. [haha]
https://us2.campaign-archive.com/?u=dcbf6b86b4b0c7d1c21b73b1e&id=1824c0b05a#Lifetime Exp

 

[Elan]

New features will come when they come.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Maybe you should not soothsay from Ed's private streams, all that does is make him more silent about any even slightly job-related questions.

 

[Mole HD]

I fully expect once the actual content of beyond is realised in Q4 that I'll pack up my HOTAS, my VA profile and HCS voice packs, unpin my landing pad map from the wall and head off back to spending my free time in flight sims and ARMA.

I'd like to feel more optimistic of course, I still love E-D for what it is...but the writing has been on the wall for E-D development since the delay in the 2.1 update. Corporate decisions for the future development of E-D were made at that time and it is showing in the design updates since 2.1. E-D has become a working within a limited budget IP which is plainly obvious aside from wishful thinking.

The increasing disconnection between FDev and the E-D player base is now quite remarkable.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I fully expect once the actual content of beyond is realised in Q4 that I'll pack up my HOTAS, my VA profile and HCS voice packs, unpin my landing pad map from the wall and head off back to spending my free time in flight sims and ARMA.

I'd like to feel more optimistic of course, I still love E-D for what it is...but the writing has been on the wall for E-D development since the delay in the 2.1 update. Corporate decisions for the future development of E-D were made at that time and it is showing in the design updates since 2.1.

The increasing disconnection between FDev and the E-D player base is now quite remarkable.

They're not gonna completely disable the Mac client, and up the system requirements for PC, at the end of the year while meanwhile having a devteam work on updates they offer for free if they havent something planned to sell us.

 

[Shadowdancer]

And on another note, that utter fixation on features that have not even been teased beyond the "nice to have" level and sometimes even treating them as "delayed" is more self-destructive than anything. It's become downright pathologic among some elements of this community.

 

[Suvi Anwar]

Who from FDev said that Atmo landings would be coming at all in the next year or two? Just like space legs, don't hold your breath, you are going to suffocate.

 

[eqinox]

"Nothing to announce. Good question though, keep asking us." Sure, but we'd actually love an answer for once.

These questions are pointless, for obvious reasons Ed wouldn't give anything away in a stream like this.

Why does he urge us to keep asking though? Maybe they haven’t been working on it yet at all, and the company needs reassurance that players want this feature enough AND are willing to pay for it.

And maybe ”working towards it” just means tech in Planet Coaster and JWE, that they could use in ED atmos, but haven’t yet.

 

[Hexcaliber]

I doubt they have even started working on atmospheric landings, looking at mid 2020 earliest in my opinion.
[h=2][/h]

Speaking to devs at various meet and greets it has been worked on for at least the last two years. However, more immediate projects take priority and it is being worked on as and when people are available. While some folks imagine that fdev should work on this as a priority, they have a schedule of releases they are working towards, other mechanics and additions they want or need out of the door first. It should be fairly obvious their original schedule has slipped, initially they had planned to release a new season of content every year, that clearly went out of the window some time ago.

 

[iFred]

And another fine example for the marketing tactics of Frontier.

 

[Mole HD]

They're not gonna completely disable the Mac client, and up the system requirements for PC, at the end of the year while meanwhile having a devteam work on updates they offer for free if they havent something planned to sell us.

I like the wishful thinking bit, Sleut...but that's all it is or can be since Frontier have retreated behind a veil of development silence except for rather twee Livestream interactions. It's only my internal alarm bells ringing of course but I can't shake the notion. I should add I'm neither emotionally attached nor a portent of doom for the game, I like it...but I play a lot of other stuff I like just as much.

The development of E-D since 2.1 has certainly been in contradiction to the initial passionate development ethos and that is quite clear. Some blame the designers of course but I'm of the opinion that the design choices have been dictated via the boardroom since the addition of Horizons, or more accurately...post Horizons with the mystery surrounding the delay in the 2.1 patch. DB's assertions that the delay was to assure absolute quality didn't bear out with the reality as we all know.

Could it be a failure to realise share holders expectations of a financial return with the Horizons release? We'll never know...but it's obvious there's some form of top management interference with the ongoing MVP attitude to the development of E-D one way or another.

 

[Brimstone]

Sure, basic atmospheric worlds (thin atmosphere with no life) are easy to implement, or even those jovian planets.

But then, tornadoe's, dust clouds, some form of weather patterns, etc etc. can be rendered, sure, BUT it's got to work ONLINE with the other players.

SO weather need to be generated by stellar forge server-side so ALL the first client instances, and subsequent instances are rendering the same weather effects.

So that a stellar forge/server issue for seeding/generating weather for that instance (AKA the whole star-system in supercruise)
Then it's networking issues, (informing the clients, and then the clients informing the other clients).
THEN it's a rendering issue, right?)

I highly doubt that's how it would actually be implimented. The way you describe it is like Stellar Forge having to simulate each and every rain drop and send it out to the clients. I think it'd be more likely that stellar forge would simply say "There's a rainstorm here" and our clients would render the same canned pre-programed rainstorm effects.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

You watched a three hour stream and that is your takeaway?

After 41 years of Star Wars, I can say only the original three movies were needed.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

He actually indicated early 2019 is too soon. Of course he doesn't literally say an exact date.

You are reading too much into what he says. All he says is 2019 is way sooner then what we think which is true. It's only 7 months away. That will whizz by in no time. These last 5 months have gone in no time.

As he said regarding Atmospherics, he has nothing to announce.

Myself, I am hoping it will be the DLC coming this year, but happy to wait as long as the rest of the game gets better.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

IMHO Atmospheric Landings is likely planned to be a big hitter.

So if anything, I'd expect any such announcement with a nice Teaser Trailer to be reserved to a big Gaming Industry Event on the Calendar.
(this week didn't quite make it in that respect, next weeks probably also not )

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Every time a Frontier-related live stream is done, Steam and GOG get more sales for other games.

 

[Ziljan]

Tbh, I'm a bit shocked that they didn't implement at least slightly thicker temporary volatiles with interesting sunsets. They don't need to do full blown weather systems and dynamic volumetric clouds to start.

That being said, I don't think even simple lifeless atmospheric are as simple as we think.

1) First there is the technical side: I imagine the problem isn't just creating these things procedurally with enough variety (while being tethered to science) but probably harder is optimizing them for a variety of system specs at a reasonable frame rate. Just look at SC and their cheesy looking (from space) fun-sized hand made planets. And those are *optimized* not proc gen, and all that can go wrong with that.

2) you need it be tied to beauty and science, which means weathering, colors matching a large variety of chemistries, bodies of various reactive liquids, volcanism, pressure and temperature hazards, corrosion hazards, lava hazards, new ways to traverse liquid obstacles, etc.

3) gameplay. This is a HUGE topic and one fraught with it's own thorny fan base hazards... Not to mention that explorers will be putting a lot of weight on this part since they've been waiting patiently on this for several years now.