Elite Dangerous needs fully fleshed out weather mechanics and landing on Earth-like planets for FPS! Oh, and gas giant ram-scooping, please.

[malfunkshun]

Firstly, I'd like to say that I'm completely new to Elite Dangerous, and this is my first post on these boards. Man, online boards sure have changed a lot since the Proboard days, way back when I was an admin at a now long defunct emulation site called EmuAsylum.

So, being that I'm a total noob here, please allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Ash, but malfunkshun has been my online handle for about 25 years, going all the way back to the olden days of yore, when AOL was in the business of providing the entire planet with free drink coasters.

Anyway, a lot of peeps just wind up calling me mal. So, hello all! Malfunkshun on your six! I'm very happy to have discovered this community, and am excited to figure out just what the heck is going on around here.

Now, regarding the purpose of this, my first post in the Elite Dangerous community forums:

I have more than just a few things to say about Elite Dangerous and the recent Odyssey expansion. Also, at last count, the dose of words contained in this post was creeping up near a thousand. That's a lotta words to parse, I know, so the upshot here is that this is gonna be a LONG POST.

I've only been playing Elite Dangerous for about a week, and Elite Dangerous is the whole reason why I paid $700 for my HP Pavilion 15 entry-level gaming laptop. And here's where it gets AWESOME! For me, anyway.

After unboxing my brand new laptop, heading straight over to Steam and searching for Elite Dangerous, I thought at first that I needed new reading glasses, because Steam was selling Elite Dangerous for... uh. Was I seeing that right? $7.50? Like, seven dollars and fifty cents? That couldn't be right. I even used a magnifying glass pressed up against my brand new screen on my brand new laptop. YUP! $7.50, as in Seven Dollars and Fifty Cents, for Elite Dangerous!

What the heck was going on? Some kind of cosmic fluke? Maybe a general apology to me, from the Universe, for a lifetime of ttery that went kinda like this...

"I've been thinking about this for a while now Ash, and I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for ting on you for decades and decades of your life. As a token of my apology, please enjoy Elite Dangerous for $7.50."

- The Universe

Was that it? Kinda like a consolation prize for being handed the winning Powerball ticket at birth?

Huh. Well, whatever strange shenanigans the up-quarks in my immediate vicinity of the local Higgs field were up to, I didn't want to wait to see what would happen next, so I snagged Elite Dangerous on Steam for seven fiddy, right then, right quick, and in a hurry!

I realize now that all of that was a pretty long introductory exposition, but I tend to digress A LOT when I'm writing. And I'm a writer on the side in my regular life, so I can't help it when a simple forum post transmogrifies into a novelette.

I can only hope that one or two of you people out there might have actually read this far, and will continue to read to the end. I mean, that's the reason why I'm writing this - for people to read it! And it would be a real bummer if nobody read this at all.

So, if you're still reading this, then NOW it's time to get to the nitty gritty of what I REALLY want to say. Here goes...
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For the convenience of the developers of Elite Dangerous, I've included here a conglomeration of several varied aspects which need to be added to the Elite game engine, like, YESTERDAY!

Firstly though, I want to commend the developers for the addition of the FPS portion included in Odyssey, and for making it such an integrally important part. I absolutely love this new FPS aspect, as it opens up brand new realms of gameplay depth, mission types, and social interaction - including the possibility for some really interesting FPS drama!

Imagine the implications of a merely potentially interesting FPS situation, and how it could quickly escalate, eventually going down into the annals of Elite lore as bonafide legend!

Take this age old example, for instance:

'Who shot first?" (SPOILER ALERT, Han shot first)

Wow! That's just one example of a potential legendary situation which could occur in the FPS portion of the game! I can't wait to see what happens when the FPS REALLY kicks in.

Speaking of FPS mechanics... If what I'm hearing about the Odyssey expansion is true, then I'm very excited that a major emphasis is being placed upon FPS aspects of the game, as I've already made clear.

However, I'm severely disappointed that Odyssey will not be including the ability for players to land on Earth-like planets, water worlds, and planets with thick atmospheres.

As I've already indicated, I'm brand new to Elite Dangerous, but when I learned that the best planets in an entire galaxy of 400 billion stars were simply OFF LIMITS... Well. That's when I began to suspect that there might be a reason for why Elite Dangerous only cost seven fiddy.

So, what gives here? The pre-alpha test footage on YouTube seems to indicate that landing, and especially going FPS on Earth-like worlds, as well as alien worlds with thick atmospheres, would be a major upgrade to the play mechanics. I was really excited to learn that the game I'd just purchased would be enjoying continuous support, and adding exciting new aspects to the realism of actually exploring large planets with thick atmospheres was exactly the kind of thing that I assumed would be a no-brainer!

Why then are players only allowed to land on barren planets with no atmospheres? Why? It's a simple question. Just one word:

WHY?

That simply makes zero sense to me. Why is the game limited like this? Would it break the game to let ships land on worlds with, you know, a little liquid water on the surface? An atmosphere with a nice enough pressure that only a breather would be needed to go FPS'ing on the surface? Maybe even make some atmospheres breathable? At the VERY LEAST, change the colors of the skies so that daylight doesn't look like it does on the moon? Maybe add some clouds here and there?

Why, oh why can't we have, at the very least, a daylight side to a planet with a sky and no stars? One with a definitive color, like say... blue? Just a few puffy clouds in a nice, chartreuse sky? That's not impossible, and I know this because I have a degree in computer animation, and with that degree comes the secret information that Elite Dangerous Horizons Odyssey is capable of having terrestrial planets with thick, colored atmospheres for spaceships to land on!

Now, I haven't had a chance to really delve into Elite Dangerous yet, so admittedly, I have yet to experience it properly as it already is, and I'm sure there's loads of fun to be had... and I don't even have the Odyssey expansion yet.

STILL!

However great the game already is, it is still a SPACE GAME with SPACE SHIPS that players can FLY THROUGH SPACE, with the main purpose being EXPLORATION.

So, not being able to land on terrestrial worlds and EXPLORE THEM, experiencing fully rendered, definitively colored daylight skies with no stars visible, realistic clouds and weather systems, skies that aren't just thin colors on the horizon which bleed off into the blackness of space... it's close to heart-breaking, you know. To be denied such a basic, integral part of the game. It's one of the most craptacular letdowns I've ever had to experience as a gamer, in an otherwise very exciting game world.

So, terrestrial planets with thick atmospheres and, at the very least, rudimentary weather elements, such as colored skies populated with different cloud types. What I'm addressing here is one of the single most important elements that Elite Dangerous lacks, and absolutely REQUIRES implementation!

REGARDING PLANETARY ATMOSPHERES
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Careful attention should be paid to atmospheric lighting effects, including:

Realistic volumetric lighting effects, such as crepuscular rays and rainbows.

Accurate sky colors according to different worlds. For example, a Mars-like planet would have a salmon pink sky, and an Earth-like planet would of course have a blue sky. If one were to land on Venus, the sky would have a permanent, yellowish overcast. Titan would have a very dark, brownish colored and permanently overcast sky, with many cloud types visible.

Since a large portion of FPS will be done outside exploring planets, it's just beyond important to get these planetary environments done in as realistic a manner as possible.

ALL cloud types must be represented - from puffy, scattered cumulous clouds to giant cumulonimbus storm clouds which rise several kilometers into the atmosphere, causing violent weather and high winds.

Sunrises and sunsets should be equally spectacular.

All types of weather should be represented appropriately on each planet, including clear and calm skies, violent thunderstorms, dust storms, snow and blizzards, all types of rain from light showers to torrential downpours, dangerous electrical storms, plus the rare hurricane, tornado, and water spout here and there.

Weather NEEDS to play an integral role on whether or not a ship can land, take off, and fly in actively dangerous weather on such a planet.

This simply CANNOT be said enough:

Players should be allowed to land on Earth-like worlds, water worlds, and alien worlds with thick atmospheres. Landing on barren planets and moons with nothing but black skies and stars gets really boring! Are we at least in agreeance about THAT?

Along with being able to land on any world regardless of its atmosphere, some worlds - including Earth-like or terraformed worlds - should be populated with bases, ranging from colonial settlements to the occasional full blown New York City style metropolis now and then, which would really expand the FPS portion of the game. ESPECIALLY for people who are playing strictly FPS!

I have one final observation... a game mechanic that also needs to be put into effect, pronto! I'm talking about ram-scooping fuel from gas giants instead of stars.

Gas giants should be the primary refueling method for starships in systems which have gas giants of the correct composition. In most popular fictional lore, as well as real life feasibility studies, ram-scooping the coronae of stars - while feasible, really is just a bit ridiculous - at least in real life, with real physics.

Gas giants, on the other hand, are the obvious go-to for in-system ram-scoop fueling, and I have no idea why this wasn't incorporated into the game from the get-go. If you asked a real live astrophysicist which would be the better choice when it comes to ram-scooping for fuel - barring interstellar Bussard ram-jets, of course - if your asked which would be better, stars or gas giants?

Well. I'll bet my entire dingleberry collection that gas giants would be the answer. Hey, just sayin'! It's what an astrophysicist would say!

Now, ask yourselves this question, Elite developers. In 3000 years, where do you think people are going to be landing their spaceships? Just on barren, boring moons with no atmospheres?

Hell naw! We are going to be exploring those earth-like planets, the water worlds, and other types of planets with thick atmospheres, consisting of very interesting chemistry!

So, pretty please. With sugar on top. Incorporate these game mechanics I've outlined as soon as possible, mkay? With whipped cream and a cherry will you do it? Here, I'll even help you out a little bit... point you in the right direction, so to say.

Ever heard of Flight Simulator 2020, or Space Engine? Those are the kinds of details I'm talking about which need to be applied to every single alien world with a respectable atmosphere in Elite Dangerous, both for the visually dramatic elements, and also for the realism!

And kudos, Elite Dangerous developers, for implementing the FPS system! I'm really looking forward to it whenever I decide to purchase Odyssey, after all the bugs are ironed out, that is. And after all of my suggestions have been implemented, of course.

Thanky, Sai!

 

[metatheurgist]

Yeah, everyone wants those things but it's a lot easier to write about than to put it into the game, especially with the more or less scientific approach Frontier has to making these worlds. Sure you can just plop water and plants on a world by hand but it's a lot harder to simulate believable flora, fauna and even bodies or water collected by precipitation on 400B planets by procedural rules, and make it look good/acceptable.

If ED survives long enough we may see more types of planets become landable.

Welcome to the game.

 

[malfunkshun]

Thanks for the kind welcome. However, I don't feel as though the Elite playing community is asking for a frikin' ham sandwich here with what I've outlined as necessary modifications which need to be implemented NOW, like quick time and IN A HURRY! At least a couple of them, anyway.

What I'm requesting by composing this reply on these boards, plus considering the time it's taking to make myself understood, would just about equal the necessary time and effort to implement/edit a few lines of code, with minimal fuss and bother, in order to make just TWO THINGS out of all that I've demanded effective immediately. Just TWO THINGS that would satisfy for now, because for now I don't give two flips about Flight Simulator 2020 quality landscapes and detailed clouds and weather systems. I'll be demanding those things later, after the developers decide to get off their lazy asses, then plop back onto their lazy asses, and take five minutes between ALL THE CODERS to merely code these TWO THINGS... Just TWO THINGS, and we can go from there!

1. The ability to LAND on terrestrial planets with procedural oceans and thick atmospheres. This is all about looks, man! And dammit, some volumetric lighting and procedurally generated clouds ain't gonna break the testing servers! Plus, this mechanic is already built into the game. People LAND on planets all the time! Kinda. They land on barren moons with black, daylight skies full of stars. So, this thing about landing on a larger planet with a thicker atmosphere shouldn't be a problem at all to address, since it's already addressed simply by the fact that players ARE allowed to land on planets!

2. Skies. Bold, bright, colorful, daylight skies, devoid of stars. By now, it doesn't even matter what color, as long as it's not black and star studded. Again, a few procedurally generated clouds should be a snap to make happen.

Now, I ask you - are those two things simply too much to ask for? As in, planets with daylit sides with atmospheric colors and some clouds simply is not a possible thing to make happen? That it's simply too much work for a dedicated group of coders to MAKE HAPPEN, and I'm being generous here, in one week?

Every marketing showpiece I see of Elite Dangerous gameplay features ships landing on BORING MOONS with NO ATMOSPHERES, doing boring crap in the dark! Heck, I ain't even asking for a leftover pickle! Just some code tweaking which amounts to "daylight sky = blue" and "clouds = procedural/randomized" and "terrestrial planets = you can land a frkin' starship capable of interstellar flight from 1500 years in the future on one, maybe even go outside and look around".

Now tell me that's just too much to ask for a group of dedicated coders to jackhammer the code for into Elite Dangerous in one week.

I'm talking about just those two things! Are you telling me that this simply isn't possible, and cannot be done according to the laws of physics, during about a one week period?

Because to me, that means that there's just a bunch of coders with too many dingleberries to harvest than time to code.

 

[varonica]

Thanks for the kind welcome. However, I don't feel as though the Elite playing community is asking for a frikin' ham sandwich here with what I've outlined as necessary modifications which need to be implemented NOW, like quick time and IN A HURRY! At least a couple of them, anyway.

Considering all the problems and complaints we are having with planets with just tenuous atmosphere and all the predictions of DOOOOOOOM!!!!!!! you think it would be just a piece of cake to drop in landable ELW's?

I am sure if it's that easy you can have your own proceduraly generated galaxy out in a couple of weeks and we can all swap over to your game.

 

[lysan]

This is not the time for this, there are more urgent issues, it was a part of what was intended however I’m sure it will take a long time before we see this. They are struggling with the core part of the game and EDO is going to take a lot of resources to get to a place where it’s good so don’t hold your breath regarding atmo plants and weather systems.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Again, a few procedurally generated clouds should be a snap to make happen.

Ha ha ha ha no. If it was "a snap" there would be tens or hundreds of competing games already out there doing this and we'd be playing those instead.

Oh, sure, they could throw a bunch of clouds up and call it a day, no big deal. Modelling and rendering clouds has been done in games for decades, after all.

But ... you can fly seamlessly from orbit to the surface, and then around on the surface, back to orbit, etc. The clouds need to be consistent in appearance no matter where you look at them from, or if two people are looking at them at once - no flying down into what looked like a hurricane from orbit but it turns out to be a calm sunny day at the surface. And certainly you don't want a case where two people are in the same place and only one of them is seeing the dense fog, and the other one isn't.

So that's a similar problem to the one they've solved [1] with terrain ... except that the terrain is static, and clouds and weather systems move. And should vary daily, seasonally, etc. Tidally-locked worlds would have particularly strange weather systems.

So they need a way that will consistently generate a believable (at least to non-specialists who aren't looking too closely) planet-wide weather system, for any location and timestamp, in a fraction of a second on a mid-range desktop computer. And it also needs to be able to accurately and quickly back-calculate questions like "how long has it been raining in the relevant area for" so that things like surface water levels in puddles, dips, rivers, etc. match the weather.

I'm not saying that's not possible. And they've said things which hint that they do want to go that way. But equally if it only takes them another six years to get it to work I'd be impressed, and for now Odyssey only allows landing on planets where the atmosphere is thin enough that no visible weather and no surface liquids are (mostly) believable.

See you around in 2031, I guess?

[1] Solved well? The Odyssey threads are still heavily disputing that. But flawed as it is it's still impressive to get it working at all.

 

[Thatchinho]

Welcome to the forums and the game OP.

It's a mammoth post and I've only really read the start, but can probably cut to the chase.

Full Elite Dangerous, or anything else similar in scope is a enormous undertaking to develop, and takes a long long time, and a lot of money and resource.

There's two generic approaches that can be followed:

• Develop the entire thing and only release it when the full version is complete
• Develop and release it in stages

(There's pro's and con's to both of these approaches.)

ED is being developed using the latter approach.

The vision for full ED was set out a long time ago, along with a rough outline of the Major Expansions that would be released along the journey to that full version.

Scanning your post I don't think you're raising anything that hasn't been in the pipeline for full ED since day 1.

What you do seem to be doing though is somehow expecting that the entire development pipeline can be completely shortcut and they can somehow magically jump straight to the final version of ED now.

The world simply does not work that way.

Things still take time, money and resource to do, no matter how much anyone wants them. And there's also a natural sequence and progression to most things. You can't expect them to skip straight to the last, most complicated, difficult and complex phase of things first, without going through the initial and intermediate phases first.

Bear all that in mind, and you'll:

• have much more realistic expectations
• be able to make suggestions that might actually be practical

The pre-alpha test footage on YouTube seems to indicate that landing, and especially going FPS on Earth-like worlds, as well as alien worlds with thick atmospheres, would be a major upgrade to the play mechanics. I was really excited to learn that the game I'd just purchased would be enjoying continuous support, and adding exciting new aspects to the realism of actually exploring large planets with thick atmospheres was exactly the kind of thing that I assumed would be a no-brainer!

You might well have missed it if you just watched a YT vid, but they did specifically say that Odyssey was Tenuous Atmospheres only.

On the no-brainer front, well that's already covered above, but it being a no-brainer that it would be good to have something in the game doesn't mean that getting it there is going to require no brains (and no time and effort).

Anyway, welcome again, have a think through all this, and give it all due consideration. Look forward to seeing what you suggest when taking into account the background and that it all has to be not just possible, but realistically and pragmatically achievable.

Good luck! o7

 

[malfunkshun]

Welcome to the forums and the game OP.

It's a mammoth post and I've only really read the start, but can probably cut to the chase.

Full Elite Dangerous, or anything else similar in scope is a enormous undertaking to develop, and takes a long long time, and a lot of money and resource.

There's two generic approaches that can be followed:

• Develop the entire thing and only release it when the full version is complete
• Develop and release it in stages

(There's pro's and con's to both of these approaches.)

ED is being developed using the latter approach.

The vision for full ED was set out a long time ago, along with a rough outline of the Major Expansions that would be released along the journey to that full version.

Scanning your post I don't think you're raising anything that hasn't been in the pipeline for full ED since day 1.

What you do seem to be doing though is somehow expecting that the entire development pipeline can be completely shortcut and they can somehow magically jump straight to the final version of ED now.

The world simply does not work that way.

Things still take time, money and resource to do, no matter how much anyone wants them. And there's also a natural sequence and progression to most things. You can't expect them to skip straight to the last, most complicated, difficult and complex phase of things first, without going through the initial and intermediate phases first.

Bear all that in mind, and you'll:

• have much more realistic expectations
• be able to make suggestions that might actually be practical

You might well have missed it if you just watched a YT vid, but they did specifically say that Odyssey was Tenuous Atmospheres only.

On the no-brainer front, well that's already covered above, but it being a no-brainer that it would be good to have something in the game doesn't mean that getting it there is going to require no brains (and no time and effort).

Anyway, welcome again, have a think through all this, and give it all due consideration. Look forward to seeing what you suggest when taking into account the background and that it all has to be not just possible, but realistically and pragmatically achievable.

Good luck! o7

By 'no-brainer', I mean this particular game mechanic should have been implemented whenever the game was first released in 2014. They've had what, 7 years? Almost 8 years to put that no brainer into action? There are a lot of no brainers in this game. And that's just inexcusable.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to play it and enjoy it, I'm sure I will. From what I hear, the community is the only thing that gives this game legs, plus the incredible graphics and the ability to explore an entire galaxy with 400 billion stars. I mean, I bought my first gaming computer in 20 years specifically for Elite Dangerous!

Anyway. I'm not talking all doom and gloom, the FPS mechanics which are going to be implemented, or supposedly already are implemented in the very buggy, very messed up, very alpha stage Odyssey expansion, offer a huge level of depth to this game.

So I'm not saying that the developers and coders are doing everything wrong. They're just doing way too much wrong, and way too little right. And my main gripe remains, that little thing about landing on terrestrial planets. It was in all the pre-alpha video footage! Isn't that what we were supposed to expect?

I feel just a little bit lied to.

 

[malfunkshun]

Welcome to the forums and the game OP.

It's a mammoth post and I've only really read the start, but can probably cut to the chase.

Full Elite Dangerous, or anything else similar in scope is a enormous undertaking to develop, and takes a long long time, and a lot of money and resource.

There's two generic approaches that can be followed:

• Develop the entire thing and only release it when the full version is complete
• Develop and release it in stages

(There's pro's and con's to both of these approaches.)

ED is being developed using the latter approach.

The vision for full ED was set out a long time ago, along with a rough outline of the Major Expansions that would be released along the journey to that full version.

Scanning your post I don't think you're raising anything that hasn't been in the pipeline for full ED since day 1.

What you do seem to be doing though is somehow expecting that the entire development pipeline can be completely shortcut and they can somehow magically jump straight to the final version of ED now.

The world simply does not work that way.

Things still take time, money and resource to do, no matter how much anyone wants them. And there's also a natural sequence and progression to most things. You can't expect them to skip straight to the last, most complicated, difficult and complex phase of things first, without going through the initial and intermediate phases first.

Bear all that in mind, and you'll:

• have much more realistic expectations
• be able to make suggestions that might actually be practical

You might well have missed it if you just watched a YT vid, but they did specifically say that Odyssey was Tenuous Atmospheres only.

On the no-brainer front, well that's already covered above, but it being a no-brainer that it would be good to have something in the game doesn't mean that getting it there is going to require no brains (and no time and effort).

Anyway, welcome again, have a think through all this, and give it all due consideration. Look forward to seeing what you suggest when taking into account the background and that it all has to be not just possible, but realistically and pragmatically achievable.

Good luck! o7

And also, never did I indicate in anything I've posted so far that I expect the final product right this second, in front of me and installed on my computer.

I went over a few things that I think are very important, which should have been included in the original 2014 release. Weather mechanics on terrestrial planets, realistic skies and clouds - all of which can be done procedurally with very little hassle - and the ram scoop thing. That was just a last-minute idea, because I read a lot of science fiction and there's a lot of gas giant ram scooping going on in the science fiction that I read.

I understand that the game is being developed in stages, and that it's taken years to get to where it is now. I didn't play it in 2014 when it was first released, so I don't know what the game was like back then.

I know what it's like now, though. And asking to land on terrestrial planets with realistic skies is not demanding a final product. It's demanding something that should have been implemented from the very beginning of the game.

I understand exactly what's going on here. I have a degree in computer animation for crissake, I've worked on video games before. I know how the process works. I know that some games are delayed and turn out to be , like Daikatana, and some games are delayed that just might be spectacular, like Star Citizen, that never get released and turn into vaporware. Then some games... remember Battlecruiser 3000AD?

YEESH.

Anyway, Elite Dangerous is trading dangerously in Star Citizen territory. Star Citizen has crowdsourced 300 million dollars, for Pete's Sake! Holy Cow, and Land-o'Goshen!

Yeah, it looks great, but weren't we promised 300 star systems to explore in the final product? And there's what? Oh. Only one. One star system, and that game has been in development for almost 12 years, with $300 million dollars behind it! And it looks GREAT! And none of the different modules which offer the varied experiences are even compatible with one another! It's a $300 million dollar demo! Man, Alive!

SO, WHY ISN'T STAR CITIZEN DONE YET? You claim to know how these things work, so answer me that question. 12 years, 300 million, and a game that looks incredible but plays like crap, if at all, and isn't anywhere even near alpha stage yet!

As far as Elite Dangerous goes, we don't want that happening! Elite Dangerous is alive and kicking, and we want to make it better! It's not too late. Releasing it in expansion modules is completely understandable, and it's the one thing that can save this game.

I don't know what the budget is for Elite, but they've obviously put a great deal of time and effort into making a game look really really good... but somehow still dropping the ball, like toddlers playing catch with a game franchise!

Here's what I suggest. One more thing. And I know, I know. It probably ain't going to happen, and if it does, it ain't going to happen overnight. But get this..

Players should be allowed to choose to play as either Humans or Thargoids when they start the game. MAYBE Guardians, in a later expansion.

That would be such a simple solution for the complete lack of bona fide gameplay lore, as opposed to just stuff that's been written down but never experienced by the players!

That's my serious demand. The one that will make or break Elite. Elite needs to copy other successful games, like Eve Online. There's no shame in copying a great game. Eve Online is just massively complex, with almost too much going on! Eve Online operates like a real universe, filled with real people, behaving like real people would! IT'S TOO MUCH!

But, if aspects of Eve Online were incorporated into Elite Dangerous - such as massive politically motivated clans inside a game with a bonfide, functional economy, one where the actions of a player can actually affect something in the game, then it AFFECTS THE GAME ass a whole, and voila! There's your basis for real, story driven gameplay. Elite Dangerous can still be saved! But will it? Hell if I know.

SO. Yeah. Here's another no-brainer that should have been yes-brained way back in 2014. Elite Dangerous seriously needs to take a clue from Eve Online, and allow players the choice of Human or Thargoid.

Yeah, it's a pipe dream, but it's what would make the game WORK. I know what I'm talking about whenever it comes to making a successful game, and how that game needs to be structured and developed.

I've only been complaining and moaning about terrestrial planets with clouds and skies so far, but oh, man. Do I have so much more to and moan about.

But I ain't going to do that, because developers are going to do damn well what developers want to do. If they were smart, they would read what I'm posting, and take every single thing I say and make it a part of the game. And I ain't even said anywhere close to everything yet.

I'll tell you this, though. In my fantasy world, If Elite property were somehow transferred to my ownership, with the budget that they have now...

Elite Dangerous would be, quick like and in a hurry, turned around, revamped, dirtied up, and given a complete overhaul, with at least two or three different corporations, clans, aliens, or political parties to immediately ally with. But, nothin' is set in stone you know... plenty of room for backstabbing and betrayal, and even altruism, like the Rats. The Rats are, I think, the absolute best, completely character created, aspect of Elite.

And after all that, after I'd had my grubby fingers all over EVERYTHING, after listening seriously to the community and to WHAT THEY WANTED, after implementing things bored on by the players, only then would we have a game that would frikin' shock the world, man.

But I can only dream, and hope.

 

[malfunkshun]

One more thing and I'm done with this subject. Another thing that could save Elite Dangerous would be a strictly single player story-driven campaign. This campaign should be unique to Elite Dangerous, and should also follow all of the requisite module releases, such as Horizons and Odyssey, plus ongoing support for even more module releases, possibly some that are unique to the single player experience. In essence, Elite Dangerous should be divided into trail separate development houses - one for the multiplayer version we have now, and another for the single player experience.

If any developers are reading this and actually listening, you KNOW what a good idea this world be. After all, the game is supposed to cater to the wants and needs of the players. I've heard t of players dropping from the game in drivers because of what a gold plated turd it is. We want a consistent player base. We want new players to join in the fun, and stick around.

Yeah, I'm going to mention the no-brainer again. The single player version of Elite Dangerous. The one with the complex, ever evolving STORY, man.

Maybe the single player experience and the multiplayer experience could merge at different points, cross paths so to speak, influence each other. It's just another awesome game mechanic which would make this game even, well, AWRSOMER!

Do I have to come up with all the good ideas around here?