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I'm sure in another x number of years some AAA company might come along and spend way more money than Frontier have done in trying to make a game with such a wide remit - and make a better job of it. Until then it's best just to enjoy the ride and if not, get off it for a bit/altogether.
I don't know about Obsidian Ant, he's mostly quite neutral and does criticize Fdev when it comes to lack of substance.
Yamiks latest vid about the advanced multicanon was hilarious and spot on though.
I do agree with you when it comes to Fdev's communication or the lack thereof.
The stuff added with the small updates is nothing but crumbs and a whole lot of new and old bugs on top.
The new CG or Initiative is imho laughable, weeks of doing nothing and then a CG with a useless piece of junk as reward.
I'm not even bothered by the big cahuna in 2020 anymore, nothing is known and to be honest Fdev's silence and clumsy way of trying to keep players engaged have drained all my enthousiasm for the future of ED.
ED is a hard game to let go since I've invested so much time in it but I just can't bring myself to playing it anymore.
I'm playing other games now and it's a real nice change, I'm afraid the grand shebang in 2020 will be to little to late for me considering Fdev's way of producing half developed features.
I know I'm not the only one, there are only sporadic posts in my Xbox live feed about ED from my quite extensive friends list, 99% of them are playing other games by now and I made these friends while playing ED, they're all moving on.
Maybe when the 2020 update turns out to be actually anything good or when finally an extensive number of new and long time bugs get fixed I might get back to playing ED but I don't see that happening in the near future to be honest.
To bad, ED could've been so much more, I'm afraid that when a decent competitor enters the market ED will just fade away.
Imho Fdev is way to complacent due to their quite unique position in the spacegame genre.
Maybe some real competition would wake them up.
I feel as you do.
But I wish I didn't.
I wish things were different too, when ED was released I was so incredibly excited and bought an Xbox One and later the One X purely for this game.
Thrue time though, ED became more and more buggy and half baked with a team behind it that thinks it's a good idea to introduce new features but negate to develop them fully.
Most things need a grind of some sorts to actually accumulate something, purely because of a lack of creativity in order to make for some engaging gameplay.
Bugs get ignored, I wonder if the Mamba landing gear is fixed by now, and the new bug reporting system is laughable.
Yeah I wish things were different, ED at first looked like the greatest spacegame ever, a fantastic iteration of the original 1984 Elite, to bad it turned out the way it did/does.
Please supply me the "roadmap" for Windows. Or Office 365. Or Photoshop. Try MacOS, IOS. 95%???. Know what? They all have a roadmap, they just don't share it with you.
Which one of those is a multiplayer game-as-a-service?
Not that in my opinion Elite needs a detailed roadmap, but when they say "expect only token effort on our MMO(-like) game until the end of 2020, when you'll get... something", it would be good to know if that something is actually something one would look forward to.
The Post I quoted said "95% of all software produced". Reply is factually accurate.
Not that I disagree with you but again, my reply is still valid.
There is the Windows Insider Program, that not only informs you what will be in the next updates of Windows 10, but even lets you install and test them.
There is information releases for the next version usually as soon as biannual update drops. There is already information available for Windows 10 19H2 and even 20H1 (2020 update).
Office 365 detailed Road Map:
Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365
The Microsoft 365 Roadmap lists updates that are currently planned for applicable subscribers. Check here for more information on the status of new features and updates.
www.microsoft.com
macOS has developer previews, but Apple is an exception, as they are usually very secretive about their releases and made that their "image".
Ok, fair enough. You did some research there, I certainly didn't know anything about that stuff and it's software I use every day.
But I'm going to use the old forum saying of "as a developer" I would never promise something that I wasn't completely certain that it would happen in the required timescales. Customers tend to get disappointed if I do.
Also I am currently at the pub (I love working from "home") but if I could be bothered to put some effort in I'm sure I could think of a lot of software that offers no roadmap. Sorry, but the 95% is pure hyperbole.
if you want to know what's coming MacRumors normally has it covered.
Actually, I would prefer to have no advanced information. I look forward to discovering the new features on release. A roadmap would ruin that.
Yikes! To me, that sounds like a bad way to run business.
I agree with that. I wouldn't want a detailed roadmap with fixed times, because I know a lot of companies that do that but never manage to release on time.
But there is a big difference between such a roadmap and "We are working on something big but we don't tell you what!! (Ha ha)". Because that gives me the impression they don't have a plan.
I would expect something like "We are working on the next major features X and Y which are targeted for a release in Q3 2020."
A roadmap is not a promise. It's just honest information about what is the plan for the next big updates.
If they can't even tell us what they are working on, are they really working on something? Or are just taking a (another) temporary break.
You are right of course, the 95% is a number I pulled out of thin air. I often use hyperbole to push an argument.
Sure, but "when" is the tricky bit. No Man's Sky was hyped as "when this comes out, Elite Dangerous is dead". X4, the same. Star Citizen, the same.
NMS and X4 didn't kill Elite Dangerous, partly because they had their own issues, and mainly because they weren't really the same sort of game, other than the "set in space" bit. Star Citizen, meanwhile, is facing substantial delays.
Space games are not an easy market to break into, if you want to make a direct competitor to Elite Dangerous. Look at the basic requirements:
1. set in space, real-time, first person view
- almost certainly requires a custom game engine underneath
- major scale issues to support seamless landings and free in-system flight
- balancing the "space is big and empty, therefore boring" and "space is big and empty, if you didn't want that, why are you making/buying a game about space?" factors is a serious problem
2. massively multiplayer
- obvious solutions to scale issues from single-player don't work
- scale issues also with how you divide the universe up into regions
- world-centred rather than player-centred encounter design is tough
- ongoing cost base
3. role for explorers
- you don't necessarily need a whole galaxy, but several million accessible locations (whether those are systems or sub-system areas depends on how the game is designed and paced) will be needed so that the exploration isn't finished in the first few months
- ideally some of these locations will be more interesting than "ah, a rock", which is a tough one given how many there are
4. at least somewhat dynamic inhabited space
- there's a lot to balance here and on-paper design can only go so far
- decisions to be made about how big this is relative to the player base (and why)
- difficult considerations for how controllable by players this is
...and then there's all the actual implementation issues like "what do ships look like?", "how do they feel to fly?", how combat works, trade, missions, illegal activities, etc. etc. which need their own designs and implementations, which all have to [1] work together without major bugs.
Judging by the forums people have been waiting for someone else to produce a competitor pretty much since the original release. It's been about five years since the Elite Dangerous public alpha release ... and there's not even rumours of anyone new trying to get into the (sub)genre.
I suspect the issue is that it's clearly way outside the capabilities of small companies (which might still produce good space games but with a much more limited scope) but the risk/reward balance is too much towards 'risk' for the big ones.
[1] You can debate how well Frontier have managed to get all the bits to work together in Elite Dangerous without major bugs. But the point of this hypothetical competitor is to be so much better than everyone switches, so BestSpaceGameEver Ltd. has to get those bits right too.
You might want to check Dual Universe. It looks promising, but I still don't see it as a direct competitor to ED, because of its PvP (targeting) model.
I agree, there is no serious competitor at the moment, and none in the make either as far as I know.
There also lies the problem though imho.
ED being the only game in it's kind that actually works, not counting the many bugs, grants Fdev way to much room for under-delivering.
Features half developed without any follow up depth, mediocre quality cosmetic items in the store, long time bugs never solved or reappearing, updates introducing a whole bouquet of new bugs, etc, etc.
And to top it off, an anouncement not to expect some major addition to the game for a year an a half.
I wish a good competitor was on the horizon, that might encourage Fdev to actually deliver some quality.
I wish Fdev the best but I wish a lot more for ED's players.
It's much easier for a player to stop playing a certain game then it is for a developer to fix their game, just look at Anthem, I hope Fdev takes this at heart and actually look at what their players want before to many players leave, and no I don't think it's another replica multicanon for which you have to synthesize ammo using materials you have to grind for.
I'm aware that a lot of players want a lot of different things but half developed features and neglecting the large number of bugs aren't helping much in this regard.
Another problem with lack of competition is that Elite Dangerous has to do all of it. I think there's way too much in the scope for it all to get the attention it needs - so everyone complains that their bit is neglected.
If someone brought out a game which really focused on the exploration side and did it very well, but had basically no combat or inhabited space activity beyond restock, refit, head out again ... probably a lot of ED's big exploration groups would head over there in an instant. That would reduce the demand for exploration features in ED, which would let them focus more on the rest. Both games would probably end up way better at the things they specialised in.
But obviously until the competitor is there Frontier doesn't know which bits it can afford not to focus on too much, and which bits are critical for distinctiveness.
At the moment it's a bit like there's only one FPS, and it has to appeal to the careful stealth and sniping players, the people who want a giant array of ever-more ridiculous weapons to mow down waves of enemies, and the "actually, the 1870 model had an eight-shot clip" hyper-realism fans. Regardless of the build and implementation quality, there aren't going to be many people entirely happy with the result...
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