rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
Playing after end of project lifecycle
- Thread starter Kyokushin
- Start date
I play so much now, because I know that one day I will wish I had played it more when I could.
The companies I have worked for have 3-year or 5-year plans that keeps changing at least once a year.
Wouldn't be surprised that Michael Brooke's has an internal 10-year plan or DBOBE say that FD have enough stuff on their to-do list to keep them occupied for 10 years.
ED being a Game as a Service (GaaS), won't take too much cosmetic sales for FD to keep ED servers up indefinitely.
Edit:
Being deployed in the cloud probably lowers the upkeep cost even lower.
This comes up quite a bit. Could you give some idea of where/when this occurred? I'm guessing from the way you said it that it was an in-person event rather than something that can be linked to.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
It was at Lavecon 2015. I cannot remember the exact question, but it referred to the future of Elite and future expansions. Michael Brookes replied along the lines of "Don't worry, Elite is scheduled as a 10 year project, so there is plenty of new things to come". That is not a direct quote, but the words "10 years" were said in the context of the plan for the game development.
Looks like that question comes up a bit too
: This instance links to this Lavecon 2015 panel summary: I'm with Flin, however. Whatever MB said in 2015 is subject to change and it may be a 20 year plan now. In my experience Moore's Law and virtualisation mean that by the time ED is EOL its entire backend will run well enough for a single player on a Raspberry Pi X or whatever is current then.
rootsrat
Volunteer Moderator
Also Breaking News: The world just ended... again. See you tomorrow!
WorldsGreatestForumDad
Banned
With todays technology. Games like WoW and League of Legends can go forever with constant changes and upgrades.
Maybe we will never see another Elite game. Maybe we will see a lot of re-tunning, graphics and hardware updates as time goes on.
Maybe it never ends? How awesome would that be?
The plan is also to scrap it when it won't pay out enough in terms of profitability. Ofc, every corp has different thresholds. But face it, there is a plan that serves as a skeleton for development. There is no set content over ten years. No financing for ten years. This ED project is reviewed regularly and decided anew ho to proceed. And if it's running in the red: no 10 years, but pulled plugs.
Of course they say they have a long-term clue on how to do it. It'd be a really sloppy job if they ran out of ideas in their ongoing service without knowing what content they could possibly deliver.
#EliteForever
Cynic in me tells me that what most likely will happen:
- FDev will keep stating that "ED is still being actively developed by team of <insert random number>", and hence, not dead, no obligation to release offline. Probably there will be bit of new content just to show that its technically still "being developed".
- This will continue forever, well, at least until FDev goes out of business, or bought up by some corp, or undergoes "restructuring" and/or name change - at which point there will be no one to fulfil the offline version obligation.
Best you can have count on is source code released, as they did with long-obsolete classics. But no one will pour development hours just to integrate offline mode in project which considered truly dead - it will be up to open source community to make it if they ever want it.
- FDev will keep stating that "ED is still being actively developed by team of <insert random number>", and hence, not dead, no obligation to release offline. Probably there will be bit of new content just to show that its technically still "being developed".
- This will continue forever, well, at least until FDev goes out of business, or bought up by some corp, or undergoes "restructuring" and/or name change - at which point there will be no one to fulfil the offline version obligation.
Best you can have count on is source code released, as they did with long-obsolete classics. But no one will pour development hours just to integrate offline mode in project which considered truly dead - it will be up to open source community to make it if they ever want it.
I think the servers being switched off might give a clue to the remaining playerbase
Its been exactly 20 years since its release but people still play multiplayer Starcraft.
But yeah I will have to agree on the opinion its highly likely we are going to see a sequel anyway. Because the future is VR , games like this will keep being very popular.
In any case hackers can always do their magic even in worst case scenario. So worry not, Elite is here to stay.
But yeah I will have to agree on the opinion its highly likely we are going to see a sequel anyway. Because the future is VR , games like this will keep being very popular.
In any case hackers can always do their magic even in worst case scenario. So worry not, Elite is here to stay.
That why they won't switch them off (again, until they remain in any capacity as same entity). I doubt it costs them anything more than pocket change even now - that the whole point of P2P architecture. Their "servers" are just slightly glorified & masked matchmaking lobbies (as poster above rightfully mentioned).I think the servers being switched off might give a clue to the remaining playerbase
Actually having to make offline mode will cost lot more than keeping bunch of these boxes running for decades - but again, I think they simply didn't think that far. "We will figure out something when we will get there", story of all that game development basically
David braben promised to release a way to continue the game if they shut it down during some q and a or other, while answering player concerns about archiving of old games, and at the same time said he never wants it to end.
So, there is a vague promise lying about somewhere....
We'll see, I guess.
So, there is a vague promise lying about somewhere....
We'll see, I guess.
That is not being cynical, but being positive. If FD wants to 'pretend to develop this game forever' (AKA: pay for server costs indefinitely) I'd be fine with that. But they wont do that, because they ain't insane. At some point they will close the servers, and I personally dont see the 'we give the code to the community' or 'we'll make it offline' go anywhere. Its not like running a spare laptop in the basement as a server, and re-coding the entire BGS to work as a solo game makes no sense. Personally, I just assume at some point ED will cease to be a playable game. That could easily be far into the future, but at some point it'll just stop.
Which will be fine with me, because no matter how awesome the new stuff FD is cooking will be, surely there will be infinitely more mind blowing space games in 2035.
That is not being cynical, but being positive. If FD wants to 'pretend to develop this game forever' (AKA: pay for server costs indefinitely) I'd be fine with that. But they wont do that, because they ain't insane. At some point they will close the servers, and I personally dont see the 'we give the code to the community' or 'we'll make it offline' go anywhere. Its not like running a spare laptop in the basement as a server, and re-coding the entire BGS to work as a solo game makes no sense. Personally, I just assume at some point ED will cease to be a playable game. That could easily be far into the future, but at some point it'll just stop.
Which will be fine with me, because no matter how awesome the new stuff FD is cooking will be, surely there will be infinitely more mind blowing space games in 2035.
You probably right, another likely possibility is that they run game on whatever "active development" for long enough that enough people give up on it - so when they just pull the plug, only dozen will complain about some old game no one cares about anymore
