Releasing Modules for ED, Star Citizen Style.

[Wulf]

Recently Star Citizen has had a Hanger Module released. This showed a early pre alpha of your ships hanger and allowed you to walk around and inspect your ship. I understand this was released to show the progress they're making but more importantly to pick up early bugs. They plan on releasing other modules like dog fighting in the future.

I think frontier could do the same thing with ED by releasing modules to the backer of the game. This would offer several advantages over just releasing near complete alpha and beta versions of the game.

1. Allows bugs to be found much earlier
2. Shows the progress they're making
3. Allows the game to be tested on a greater number of rigs pre alpha
4. keeps the impatient backers out there happy.

I think a dog fighting and a Multiplayer module would benefit most from this approach. That's going be probably the biggest headache for Frontier to get working properly.

 

[Obadiah]

On the one hand I agree that as a backer this would be nice. It would be good to practice some dogfighting, for example... and perhaps we could give some feedback that would help shape the game...

But on the other hand - let's just let FD get on with doing what they do best? Putting these modules 'out there' must entail a very significant amount of effort on the part of FD, time and effort that would be better spent on the game.

Personally I'd trust FD to decide the process that will work best - and I think they have.

 

[izzy]

On the one hand I agree that as a backer this would be nice. It would be good to practice some dogfighting, for example... and perhaps we could give some feedback that would help shape the game...

But on the other hand - let's just let FD get on with doing what they do best? Putting these modules 'out there' must entail a very significant amount of effort on the part of FD, time and effort that would be better spent on the game.

Personally I'd trust FD to decide the process that will work best - and I think they have.

Agree, let FD make the game at there pace. There are alpha and betas tests, I think it is enough

 

[JohnStabler]

Star Citizen has a year until release, so they have more time to mess around and waste time placating impatient backers. Frontier wants to get the game out asap and I am glad of that.

Although an exciting gameplay video would be nice

 

[izzy]

Yes gameplay videos would be great

 

[Tinman]

Star Citizen has a year until release...

Precisely, also we need to take into account the differences in terms of development. Since SC is "handcrafted" for the most part it's much easier to "lock down" a section of the game and call it finished.

If the SC dev team have modeled out an entire starsystem those "planets" (3D spheres with textures on them ) will be done. The same can't be said for ED since if you change the algorithm for how a certain class of planet looks every single planet of that type in the entire galaxy will change. This can probably be applied to pretty much everything we are going to see in terms of environment: distribution of asteroid fields, stations, planets, stars, nebulas, layout of station interiors and so on...

Having a game that makes these kind of drastic changes on a "daily basis" being played by a lot of people will probably only cause frustation. What if you as a player really really liked a certain version of a planet or station and then suddenly it's has changed completely?

Doing modules in ED simply isn't the same thing.

What if one of these modules was the starmap, which is the basis for the entire environment in ED? Will you then be able to explore the entire galaxy freely, thus revealing things you later want to find in game?

What if one of the modules was stations? Since you don't have an avatar (yet), what are you suppose to do? Sit there?

What if one of the modules was "multiplayer"? I would say this is pretty hard to define as a separated thing. To test the networking and grouping you pretty much need both the "starmap module" and the "ship/dogfighting module" anyway.

The dogfighting aspect is the only thing that really can be tested as a separate thing, but we are getting that in December anyway (just like SC). At least the people who have pledged at alpha level.

Although an exciting gameplay video would be nice

This I fully agree with!

 

[Patrick_68000]

I have access to Beta and I will not participate due to lack of time. I will download the beta just to admire the graphics and a walk, in the game. So modules before alpha is not essential for me. But I am very interested by a gameplay video. A long video, Of course.

 

[Zplintz]

Star Citizen has a year until release, so they have more time to mess around and waste time placating impatient backers. Frontier wants to get the game out asap and I am glad of that.

Although an exciting gameplay video would be nice

Strongly agree (on both accounts).

 

[Slawkenbergius]

Star Citizen has a year until release, so they have more time to mess around and waste time placating impatient backers.

From their point of view, it was probably time well spent. Within the space of a few days, they'll probably have made close to $1m. All those $5 posters and $20 buggies add up...

 

[JohnStabler]

From their point of view, it was probably time well spent. Within the space of a few days, they'll probably have made close to $1m. All those $5 posters and $20 buggies add up...

Great. But I was giving my opinion. And all I care about is getting my mitts on Elite Dangerous.

 

[Komemiute]

What I would love is to see Modules being released in a Suspension of Disbelief manner.

I know that I'm buying the "Land on planet module", but make it in game as I'm earning the equivalent of an extension for my Flight License -

Maybe with a little tutorial masked as "practical driving test" that shows us the ropes of Planetary landing...

The First Person module as a Gun Permit/Basic Infantry course.

And so on...
Am I right? Thoughts?