Should Frontier continue labouring over Elite Dangerous? Or call it time and work on Elite Dangerous 2?

FX2K

FX2K
shevek said:
The best thing for Fdev would be to pull the plug on ED and concentrate on a good seller like Jurassic World Evolution.
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LOL, It may have sold well due to nostalgia, but did you play it (when it released)?

The gameplay loop consisted of...Repair this fence, Refill this feeder, Inject / airlift this dino.
Every now and then, do it all 10x quicker in an emergency and turn back on some power, then back to the daily grind of refill this feeder.


The game had lots of potential, great graphics, great foundation, the building was ok if not limited, but the things to do where as imaginative as those in Elite... repetition with timers. I can't speak for it now, been a while since I looked back, but Frontier need some new gameplay people, preferably with fun imaginations.
 

Gauntlet

Gauntlet
Alien said:
  • Frontier are actually losing money with ED because of all the Lifetime Expansion Pass holders who aren't buying expansions like Odyssey. Elite Dangerous 2 would mean a fresh start without an LEP and therefore income from everyone, not just those without the LEP.
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I'm I LEPer who over the last 7 yrs has spent more on cosmetics than the cost of the expansions many times over, as much to 'help keep the servers running' as anything else lol. Not any more though my wallet remains closed to Frontier for the foreseeable future.

If ED2 became a thing, then no preorders from me, they'd have to prove it was worth my time and money.
 

CMDR Karrde Sun

CMDR Karrde Sun
FX2K said:
LOL, It may have sold well due to nostalgia, but did you play it (when it released)?

The gameplay loop consisted of...Repair this fence, Refill this feeder, Inject / airlift this dino.
Every now and then, do it all 10x quicker in an emergency and turn back on some power, then back to the daily grind of refill this feeder.


The game had lots of potential, great graphics, great foundation, the building was ok if not limited, but the things to do where as imaginative as those in Elite... repetition with timers. I can't speak for it now, been a while since I looked back, but Frontier need some new gameplay people, preferably with fun imaginations.
Click to expand...

While i was 5+ years too late to play the original elites, i did spent alot of time playing operation genesis in my teens, and was super excited to hear that frontier was making the spiritual successor to it with JWE. Very excited.

Sadly it didn't work out.

  • JWE was a frontier game, just another tool skeleton with good graphics and sound. The original had so much more depth, even though it was an "arcade" parkbuilder at the time.
  • The story based campaign which they hyped and had so much potential turned out to be running commentary of the map objectives. Frontier can't tell a story if their existence depended on it.
  • The worst part was the graphics were just sterile. They looked good, but apart from the music and jeff goldblum, nothing suggested i was in jurassic park it was generic dinosaur game.
  • The park building was too dumbed down.
  • The guests were meaningless apart from dinosaur food and an aggregate backend statistic. I think this was the killer.
  • I didn't even care about the iphone mechanics. They were totally fine, the operation genesis copying parts of it overwrote noticing that.
So frontier "frontier" all their games, its not just elite :p
 
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Alien

Alien
Soulstain said:
Well, to me, that would look like a way to avoid fulfilling the lifetime pass obligation. Would most LEP owners have expected to get only 2 expansions for their money? I paid full price for ED and Horizons. Add Odyssey to it and I still paid much less than an LEP.
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To be fair to Frontier, they labelled the LEP as LIFETIME, either the game's lifetime or yours, whichever is shorter (i guess, I'm not an expert on the definition as it is being interpreted by Frontier) otherwise I agree with you.
 

Erei

Erei
I'm not sure if I'd like to wait years for another ED. And I don't think Fdev would be willing to invest in such. The ROI on it would be terrible, while they can make a tycoon in 2-3years max and get lots of money from it.
Today Fdev is not kickstarter day Fdev. I mean, rushing Odyssey just so it could fit into the yearly financial report is kinda an indication of that.
 

shevek

S
FX2K said:
LOL, It may have sold well due to nostalgia, but did you play it (when it released)?

The gameplay loop consisted of...Repair this fence, Refill this feeder, Inject / airlift this dino.
Every now and then, do it all 10x quicker in an emergency and turn back on some power, then back to the daily grind of refill this feeder.


The game had lots of potential, great graphics, great foundation, the building was ok if not limited, but the things to do where as imaginative as those in Elite... repetition with timers. I can't speak for it now, been a while since I looked back, but Frontier need some new gameplay people, preferably with fun imaginations.
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I mentioned that it was a good seller rather than a good game.
 

GJ51

GJ51
Globusdiablo said:
This. Whoever led the initial (focused) development are obviously gone, and have been for a while. Current development is an absolute incoherent mess with absolutely no focus on what the Elite franchise is all about.

I'm going to call it, and say that Elite: Dangerous peaked pre Engineers. It became a bug ridden money grabbing grind fest from there.

Happily I was there when Elite: Dangerous was at it's best, and I have fond memories. I don't have any hope or confidence that FD can or even want to salvage this debacle. It's all about the green after all. :(
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Pretty much have to concur with this view

That's why I just continue to play Horizons in a way that's almost identical to what I did back in the day.

I mostly trade and explore and FC has added to that activity, but otherwise I play pretty much as I did back in 2014/15

YMMV
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
Globusdiablo said:
This. Whoever led the initial (focused) development are obviously gone, and have been for a while. Current development is an absolute incoherent mess with absolutely no focus on what the Elite franchise is all about.

I'm going to call it, and say that Elite: Dangerous peaked pre Engineers. It became a bug ridden money grabbing grind fest from there.

Happily I was there when Elite: Dangerous was at it's best, and I have fond memories. I don't have any hope or confidence that FD can or even want to salvage this debacle. It's all about the green after all. :(
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'Pre engineers', that was CQC, Powerplay, broken wings and a route plotter update from 100 to 1000 ly, right?

PS
Just remembered, it also was just laser mining and it took some time until we got suicidal collector limpets.
 

Erei

Erei
[MEOW] babelfisch said:
'Pre engineers', that was CQC, Powerplay, broken wings and a route plotter update from 100 to 1000 ly, right?
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Back when it was sitting at "mixed" on steam because it was mostly about grinding pirate in a res site, with low cred reward, so you could hope to have an anaconda someday ?

I was not playing, but I heard the tales.
 

S0rkvild

S0rkvild
Alien said:
Case for Elite Dangerous 2:
  • The code for ED is a mess as it has been added to and added to and each time they have to fix things that are caused when they add new code
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What makes you so sure that code for ED2 won't be a mess xD You must be a real optimist it is a good thing, but coding and mess, mhmmm
 

xeroxzone

xeroxzone
Erei said:
To be honest, it's a 10years old code (at least) with many changes and addition. I fully expect it to be messy. Just the way it is.

Also, according to glassdoor (take with a pich of salt), ED's engine is nicknamed "legacy engine" in Fdev, and is considered very clunky to use.
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Agile development methods and micro service architectures also existed ten years ago. And from the outside, you can't really know much about the inner structure. From the API implementations of ED, you can clearly see that it is a distributed system. Every part could be interchangeable. It's clear that poor product planning and quality assurance can lead to even the best code and architecture being poorly presented up front, and being so bogged down by lots of bugs and blocked user concepts that it's all of no use. But do not want to be so negative ;)
 

TANDKO

TANDKO
Alien said:
  • Frontier are actually losing money with ED because of all the Lifetime Expansion Pass holders who aren't buying expansions like Odyssey. Elite Dangerous 2 would mean a fresh start without an LEP and therefore income from everyone, not just those without the LEP.
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Frontier, has already made more money with LEP than they would've if they had sold all DLCs to LEP owners. Frontier has not delivered value to the LEP cost at all yet. So if ED2 was a thing it should be, at minimum, a free base game for current LEP owners anyway.
 

Cmdr Eratosthenes

C
Alien said:
-SNIP-
  • Frontier are actually losing money with ED because of all the Lifetime Expansion Pass holders who aren't buying expansions like Odyssey. Elite Dangerous 2 would mean a fresh start without an LEP and therefore income from everyone, not just those without the LEP.
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Pretty big (incorrect) assumption I'd be buying ED2...

Disclosure: LEP holder
 

robbyp

robbyp
No to ED2.

So,

"The code for ED is a mess as it has been added to and added to and each time they have to fix things that are caused when they add new code"

How do we know what state the code is in? Unless your at Frontier, you don't know. And Elite is a very large program now, and large programs are always hard to keep stable.

"It would be easier to put in things the community wants that would be harder in ED because ED wasn't designed from scratch for things like walking around and ship interiors or fleet carriers etc"

Ditto above. How do we know its not possible? And they seem to been able to put feet into Elite, and fleet carriers.

"Frontier are actually losing money with ED because of all the Lifetime Expansion Pass holders who aren't buying expansions like Odyssey. Elite Dangerous 2 would mean a fresh start without an LEP and therefore income from everyone, not just those without the LEP."

LEPs are a v. tiny fraction of the player base.
 
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