Elite Dangerous should still be in Beta (like most big games with 4 years of development)

SentineI

SentineI
With it's Kickstarter in November 2012, Elite Dangerous now has about 3.5 to 4.5 years of development. Let's say 4 years to keep it simple.

According to the following graph, after 4 years of development most big games have just come out of Alpha & entered the Beta phase:

cLzfEH3.png


And it took 5 to 8 years of development before those games were actually released. From that perspective it's not surprising Elite Dangerous still feels a bit empty & under-developed. It's just a shame that Frontier had to release Elite Dangerous before it was really ready...
 
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racer1

racer1
Interesting, probably the only way they could do it.

Can't help feeling you graph is a thinly veiled dig at SC though ;)
 

AJW

AJW
racer1;3766657I said:
...
Can't help feeling you graph is a thinly veiled dig at SC...
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Yup - according to what I can find from a Google image search, it was created specifically to show how long SC was taking. I'm not sure it can be used to prove anything much. Not that I care, since I'm enjoying ED now, 'finished' (whatever that means with games software nowadays) or not.
 

SentineI

SentineI
racer1 said:
Can't help feeling you graph is a thinly veiled dig at SC though ;)
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That was not my intention. It may have been the intention of the original creator of the graph... but I care not! Or should we care that some of the greatest works of art were originally pieces of propoganda?
 
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Barking_Mad

Barking_Mad
It's from Derek Smart on his latest SC blog, although I'd point out that doesn't necessarily make it wrong. :) I had a quick look at a couple of the games development time last night and the overall times checked out.

I'm not sure how else they could have done ED other than to leave it in Beta for the entire development cycle. As until it's all finished you could argue it's always in beta.
 

Bran Tse Mallory

Bran Tse Mallory
ChrisH said:
Don't attack the source, attack the content :)
If the content is wrong, please feel free to correct it!
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I asked because I know at least one of them is very wrong.

Also this graph in no way takes into account the production of hand crafted assets, maps and levels. Something Frontier do not have a lot of - This is a huge part of making any game, especially for those shown above as well as the whole story creation, mo-cap, voice over work and so much more. Yes I know SC has some PG in it but most of it is all hand crafted assets made by disparate teams.

I also think that Elite is exactly where I would expect it to be given it's development time frame - it has game but not as most people expect to find. i.e. It's not going to hold you hand and lead you through a scripted story.
 

ZeeWolf

ZeeWolf
Star Citizen aside, is it fair to compare ED to games that would have presumably followed the standard publisher model?

Isn't ED still a bit niche' and a bit indie? Also, even though the Elite franchise is old, most of those games are sequels to more recent games.

So I'm not really sure what the point here is? Big space games should try to be more like established sequels with publishers behind them?

Reality check:

- Space games have pretty much gone as far as publishers were concerned. There was EvE and there was X and some one person indie projects but that was pretty much it. Nobody was putting big teams into open world space gaming anymore.

- Both Braben & Roberts claim they had difficulty finding publisher backing for the genre with previous examples such as Freelancer bring quite expensive to make vs the return.

- Open world space games are ridiculously difficult to develop and debug and increasing demand for "high fidelity" and online gaming isn't making that any easier.

- There doesn't seem to be a universal agreement among the community about what constitutes a "completed" game here anyway, everyone plays it differently. You might think hey fix the missions so they play the way I want, fix the trading so it does this and add passenger missions and that's ok. Someone else wants more in depth mining or pirating. It's an endless undertaking.

- Steam is full of concept titles, especially space games. There are so many "early access" space games that will probably be early access until people get bored of paying for them.

So is it bad that Frontier have gone for a minimal viable product release which they build on over time?

I'm actually kind of glad they put it out on it's own merits because they put in extra time and effort over Christmas 2014 fixing really critical bugs, performance issues etc. to give us a reasonable quality build of the game. Beta would just give them excuses.
 

SentineI

SentineI
To keep (some) of the nit-pickers happy, I've removed the S.C. references from the image...

Bran Tse Mallory said:
I asked because I know at least one of them is very wrong.
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Still waiting to find out what is wrong :)

Also this graph in no way takes into account the production of hand crafted assets, maps and levels. Something Frontier do not have a lot of
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I'd like to know where you get that strange idea from. FDev still have to do quite a lot of hand-crafted assets, as far as space games go. Or do you think all those ships, weapons, effects, space stations, outposts, planetary bases, SRV(s), crashed ships/probes, loot, etc just make themselves? And those procedurally-generated planets still need a lot of work from artists, to make them look right. Same for those procedurally-generated faces that are coming in 2.1.

I also think that Elite is exactly where I would expect it to be given it's development time frame
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That is ummm exactly the point I was trying to make in my first post....
 
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Bacalao

Bacalao
ChrisH said:
And it took 5 to 8 years of development before those games were actually released. From that perspective it's not surprising Elite Dangerous still feels a bit empty & under-developed. It's just a shame that Frontier had to release Elite Dangerous before it was really ready...
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I prefer it this way and it really is the only way Elite could work. I don't think Braben could pull off hype train perma-funding the way RSI has and Frontier doesn't have the bankroll of Activision or Ubisoft to float them for 5-8 years. Frontier owns up to every development step they take in Elite because they have to release it as part of a final product. They take a lot of crap for it but they've got stones the size of ostrich eggs for doing it, most developers hide behind an alpha x.x.x.x sticker or a wall of money from a big dev studio.
 

AJW

AJW
Just a thought, but can anyone explain what the point of this thread is? The game has been released, people have bought it, people are playing it (heck, people are enjoying playing it), and time machines haven't yet been invented, so nothing can be changed anyway...
 

Tinman

Tinman
AJW said:
Just a thought, but can anyone explain what the point of this thread is? The game has been released, people have bought it, people are playing it (heck, people are enjoying playing it), and time machines haven't yet been invented, so nothing can be changed anyway...
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People's expectations on what can reasonably be achieved within a certain timeframe can be chang....BWAHAHAHA...haha...almost made it to the end there!! :p
 
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