I probably won't get an answer to this, but I would like to attempt to ask Frontier Developments why the original Elite fanbase, ie those of us who were members of this forum asking for an Elite sequel before Elite Dangerous was even a thing, have been mostly ignored throughout most of this games development?
Yeah, I know that it probably sounds a bit entitled to ask a question like this. Afterall, who the hell am I to get a bit haughty about the state of a game when I had not part in making it. I'm sure there are plenty of other gamers out there who love the game as much as some of us older gamers are left a bit cold by it. But without those of us who were here before Elite Dangerous became a thing,the developers at FDev wouldn't have even known that there was an audience for a new version of Elite. Afterall, the last one before this was released in 1995, so it could be considered a forgotten project no longer in the consciousness of the wider gaming audience.
When I first joined these forums in 2008, there was a lot of clamour and speculation about "Elite 4". Where was it? Why hadn't it been made? Was David Braben secretly working on a version without us knowing? We kept asking, and asking, and asking...
And then Elite Dangerous came into view! We backed it, we bought it hook line and sinker... We were finally going to get the long awaited sequel to Frontier Elite 2 and Frontier First Encounters. Basically everything that the old games were but with more life, and much better graphics... When it finally arrived it was more like the original Elite, but this was fine... Surely the add-ons and expansions to turn Elite Dangerous into something like FFE or FE2 but BETTER would come in the first year or two or three? But no... We expected big things (because why not when the previous games were so epic?), and instead what we got was a shallow, watered down, MMO "games as a service" thing that looks a bit like Elite but has very few of its features!
It all looked good around the release of Horizons with the release of rocky worlds to land on, and many of us foolishly thought that we'd get more planets the following year... but nothing... All the additions we've had have been mostly bug fixes, tweaks to existing features or multiplayer content... nothing that actually turns Elite Dangerous into a game worthy of the Elite name.
So, many years on down the line, and we're still playing a game that feels like many of its features are placeholders... What's going on? Why haven't you delivered to your original fanbase what they wanted, which was basically FE2 with better graphics? Surely filler like CQC, Powerplay, Carriers, Multicrew, etc, could have waited until you'd actually finished the development of the things that the other games had? Surely the base product should have been to recreate Elite 84, then through add-ons bring it up to the level of Frontier Elite 2 or First Encounters, and finally start to flesh out the game with content like Carriers, Power Play, Space Legs, CQC and Multicrew? Surely that would have made a lot more sense that the disjointed development that the game has had so far? Or have you just decided to ignore the core features form the older games because you could?
What you've done here is the equivalent of DC Comics announcing a new Batman movie, but he spends the entire film dressed in a pink bunny outfit. Sure it's still Batman, sort of, but it's a bit of an insult to the original fans...
I'm not saying that new fans of the game can't enjoy it, but there wouldn't be new fans without us older fans who were asking for an Elite game for years. Some of us who'd been fans for a long time wanted something different to this thing that we've got. Something more... Elite!
Yeah, I know that it probably sounds a bit entitled to ask a question like this. Afterall, who the hell am I to get a bit haughty about the state of a game when I had not part in making it. I'm sure there are plenty of other gamers out there who love the game as much as some of us older gamers are left a bit cold by it. But without those of us who were here before Elite Dangerous became a thing,the developers at FDev wouldn't have even known that there was an audience for a new version of Elite. Afterall, the last one before this was released in 1995, so it could be considered a forgotten project no longer in the consciousness of the wider gaming audience.
When I first joined these forums in 2008, there was a lot of clamour and speculation about "Elite 4". Where was it? Why hadn't it been made? Was David Braben secretly working on a version without us knowing? We kept asking, and asking, and asking...
And then Elite Dangerous came into view! We backed it, we bought it hook line and sinker... We were finally going to get the long awaited sequel to Frontier Elite 2 and Frontier First Encounters. Basically everything that the old games were but with more life, and much better graphics... When it finally arrived it was more like the original Elite, but this was fine... Surely the add-ons and expansions to turn Elite Dangerous into something like FFE or FE2 but BETTER would come in the first year or two or three? But no... We expected big things (because why not when the previous games were so epic?), and instead what we got was a shallow, watered down, MMO "games as a service" thing that looks a bit like Elite but has very few of its features!
It all looked good around the release of Horizons with the release of rocky worlds to land on, and many of us foolishly thought that we'd get more planets the following year... but nothing... All the additions we've had have been mostly bug fixes, tweaks to existing features or multiplayer content... nothing that actually turns Elite Dangerous into a game worthy of the Elite name.
So, many years on down the line, and we're still playing a game that feels like many of its features are placeholders... What's going on? Why haven't you delivered to your original fanbase what they wanted, which was basically FE2 with better graphics? Surely filler like CQC, Powerplay, Carriers, Multicrew, etc, could have waited until you'd actually finished the development of the things that the other games had? Surely the base product should have been to recreate Elite 84, then through add-ons bring it up to the level of Frontier Elite 2 or First Encounters, and finally start to flesh out the game with content like Carriers, Power Play, Space Legs, CQC and Multicrew? Surely that would have made a lot more sense that the disjointed development that the game has had so far? Or have you just decided to ignore the core features form the older games because you could?
What you've done here is the equivalent of DC Comics announcing a new Batman movie, but he spends the entire film dressed in a pink bunny outfit. Sure it's still Batman, sort of, but it's a bit of an insult to the original fans...
I'm not saying that new fans of the game can't enjoy it, but there wouldn't be new fans without us older fans who were asking for an Elite game for years. Some of us who'd been fans for a long time wanted something different to this thing that we've got. Something more... Elite!
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