How realistic are this game's ambitions?

Hadrian Bently

H
Most of us are very excited about the proposed future of Elite. Especially the idea of station life, walking around ships, seamless planet flight/landing, FPS boarding action, and Thargoid attacks.

But it does make me wonder if Frontier has even a fraction of the funds and man-power to make all these ideas happen. I can see maybe one of them happening after a year or two. But ALL of them?

I can see that the game is getting good reviews on Steam but just how many sales is it going to take to turn Elite into a full on simulated universe of dream-of awesomeness without bankrupting the company?

Color me cynical but I'd like to know whether or not I should get my hopes up....
 
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slightly.distant

S
Walking in stations/ships - I believe it will happen at some point.
Planetary flight - Eh...maybe. Landing and walking around...v0v no idea.
Boarding - I don't see how you could do that in open and keep yourself from getting exploded by other ships unless your hijacking a ship but thats a big risk and youre boned if it goes south.
Thargoids - if nothing else I would love this. Seems easy enough to do as well and could lead to all kinds of thargoid variant weapons, mods, and ships.
 

Aewarin Jameson

Aewarin Jameson
Their game vision is based on a 10 year plan - I think it's achievable, more so with them showcasing Cobra (the engine) as a multipurpose tool to license out to 3rd parties that will bring in revenue, coupled with the add-on packs that should (if they are good enough) be self funding.
 

SirAdelaide

SirAdelaide
They are all technically possible, but very unlikely in the reasonable future given how long it has been with many release promises still not completed.

As another current thread shows, we're still waiting on a Spanish translation that was promised to be in at launch. If they can't translate text files, coding an FPS is way out of reach.
 

taeyoonpark.81

T
Liqua said:
Their game vision is based on a 10 year plan - I think it's achievable, more so with them showcasing Cobra (the engine) as a multipurpose tool to license out to 3rd parties that will bring in revenue, coupled with the add-on packs that should (if they are good enough) be self funding.
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10 years? lol
Once Star Citizen comes out no one will be playing Elite Dangerous except like 100 fanboys that are on this forum.
 
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aRtFuL

A
The seamless planetary flight and landing part is pretty realistic at least - considering FD has already done it in the past with Elite 2:Frontier and FFE.

So they already knows how to do it (just a question of how to make it look good).
 

Cargobane

Cargobane
Of the 5 things you listed, only the last is something actually look forward too, and think is realistic to appear within the next year.

SC will never happen expect as a wayward anti-Eve project.
 

kirkkh

K
Hadrian Bently said:
Most of us are very excited about the proposed future of Elite. Especially the idea of station life, walking around ships, seamless planet flight/landing, FPS boarding action, and Thargoid attacks.

But it does make me wonder if Frontier has even a fraction of the funds and man-power to make all these ideas happen. I can see maybe one of them happening after a year or two. But ALL of them?

I can see that the game is getting good reviews on Steam but just how many sales is it going to take to turn Elite into a full on simulated universe of dream-of awesomeness without bankrupting the company?

Color me cynical but I'd like to know whether or not I should get my hopes up....
Click to expand...

I doubt I'll be playing Elite Dangerous in 2025.
 

Alex Brentnall

Alex Brentnall
Well considering Frontiers strategy of doing one thing at a time and doing it well, then its possible so long as the interest remains. Remember this is a kickstarter backed project so its being done for the love of the game mainly and not for making money, this isn't a standard Fifa/COD remake or a ubisoft micro-payment scam.
I mean they've got the groundwork done exceptionally well, scaled ships and cockpits ready for leaving the pilots seat. Decent engine and graphics with a large enough galaxy to play around with.

Wings got a major re-vamp in 1.2 and it seems like there's only a handful of complaints with one or two exploits.
Assuming powerplay in 1.3 is similar and continues the well thought out pattern I see no reason why they can't slowly build up to the end version.

Obviously I expect they will start with the easier things like passengers, multi-crewed ships and things but I'm happy to put the game down for a few months and come back to it after an update and re-experience the game. (I cannot say that I didn't get my moneys worth if updates give me a reason to play in 3-4 years time.)
 
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EdzUp

EdzUp
Hadrian Bently said:
Most of us are very excited about the proposed future of Elite. Especially the idea of station life, walking around ships, seamless planet flight/landing, FPS boarding action, and Thargoid attacks.

But it does make me wonder if Frontier has even a fraction of the funds and man-power to make all these ideas happen. I can see maybe one of them happening after a year or two. But ALL of them?

I can see that the game is getting good reviews on Steam but just how many sales is it going to take to turn Elite into a full on simulated universe of dream-of awesomeness without bankrupting the company?

Color me cynical but I'd like to know whether or not I should get my hopes up....
Click to expand...

Ok, planetary landings are easily doable as has been done in FFE. How detailed it will be is anyone's guess.

Boarding actions are also doable as is walking around in things, if your ship gets destroyed whilst your boarding I hope ya like the brig or space ;)

Thargoid attacks has been planned since day I iirc but having them in boarding actions now that would be interesting :)

Fwiw games have done planetary landing since Starflight where you could land anywhere and explore a planet collecting minerals and wildlife and that came out many years ago in the 80s iirc.
 

Twelvefield

Twelvefield
Their biggest game up to ED is Roller Coaster Tycoon III. It was an okay game. They've also made some aborted attempts at games, also on the okay side. Really, for me, anyways, ED is an okay game as well, just that personally it strikes a massive nostalgia chord I have a hard time resisting: same with Microsoft Flight Simulator, OOTPB, and to a certain extent Railroad Tycoon, Sim City, and yep, Roller Coaster Tycoon.

The things that Frontier seems to want to add definitely do not strike a chord of nostalgia in me. Nastalgia, the nasty aspect of it, maybe. Planetary landings in Elite: Frontier were a chore with no real advantage as opposed to communing with the space stations (no advantage that I recall), and the cobalt blue space hangs in my memory of game design decisions gone bad because someone wanted complexity for the sake of complexity.
 

CravenTHC

C
taeyoonpark.81 said:
10 years? lol
Once Star Citizen comes out no one will be playing Elite Dangerous except like 100 fanboys that are on this forum.
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I guess you can count me as 1 of 100. I see no reason to patronize a game that is openly and overtly pay to win. Furthermore, I would stress caution with counting your chickens before they hatch. There's still a distinct possibility that Star Citizen may not deliver on all of it's promises. Which kind of begs the question, who's really the "fanboy", me or you? It sounds to me like you're judging Elite based on promises that Star Citizen has yet to deliver.
 

Jack Schitt

Jack Schitt
Liqua said:
Their game vision is based on a 10 year plan - I think it's achievable, more so with them showcasing Cobra (the engine) as a multipurpose tool to license out to 3rd parties that will bring in revenue, coupled with the add-on packs that should (if they are good enough) be self funding.
Click to expand...

The risk with licensing the Cobra engine is that someone will use it to create a more immersive game than ED and all the players will jump ship. It's unlikely, but not impossible.

It would be particularly sad if someone came out with a stunning space trading game, and all the trade-only players abandoned ED for it, then someone came out with a stunning space shooter, and all the PvP players abandoned ED for it, then someone came out with a stunning deep space exploration game... you can see where I'm going with this. By trying to be all things to all people, there's a constant risk that ED will lose chunks of its player base to other games that more specifically target their play style. If those games were developed using Cobra the irony would be awful.

kirkkh said:
I doubt I'll be playing Elite Dangerous in 2025.
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If the servers are still on then I will be, although the frequency of play will likely drop. I still play Frontier from time to time under emulation. But then I've loved all the iterations of the universe DB created, ever since it was just a novella and a few white pixels on a black background, so I'm heavily biased. During the KS phase that seemed to be quite a common story but I've no idea what proportion of the current ED player base shares that passion. It's almost certainly a minority viewpoint now.

ED will have to do amazingly well in continued sales if it's still going to be around in 2025. From a purely technical and visionary standpoint I've no doubt FD could pull this off. And the developers' passion for their creation is in strong evidence all over these forums and elsewhere. But the gaming community is mercurial and you never know where the next Big Threat to a given product will come from. Throw in FD's penchant for repeatedly annoying the hell out of their customers with eleventh-hour feature changes, bizarre marketing decisions and historically poor PR, and the long-term future looks a lot less certain.
 

Philip Coutts

Volunteer Moderator
Philip Coutts
Elite has endured, there are still a lot of folk playing the original Elite or the updated Oolite. I would expect ED to do the same. I know I'll still be firing it up in 10 years time. I waited 30 years for a sequel to Elite and now I have it I won't let it go easily. If that makes me a "fanboi" then so be it. I think as far as add on's Walking around and planetary landings will be done but beyond that I'm not convinced what else they could add that people would want to pay for.
 

Ian Phillips

Volunteer Moderator
Ian Phillips
If this discussion continues to focus on Star Citizen, it will be closed and the participants redirected to the Star Citizen thread.

Please keep on topic.
 

Yuriev

Y
Ian Phillips said:
If this discussion continues to focus on Star Citizen, it will be closed and the participants redirected to the Star Citizen thread.

Please keep on topic.
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Yeah elite is here and star citizen is not. Lets focus on the game we are actualy playing guys =)

as for myself, im a day 1 world of tanks player, and i would never imagine that i would be playing it 4 years later.... you never know. If FD keeps the quality im pretty sure ED will still be around in 10 or evem more years. Damn im no fanboy but this game is just mind boggling epic, i dont think i will ever stop playing it like ever <3
 
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