Some Questions about Expansions

[M3SS3NG3R]

Hi all,

In light of the pending removal of life-time expansion pass on July 29th, as an owner of a pre-ordered copy of the game I am now giving the values of expansion packs some serious thoughts. Some questions might be a bit too early, but they're more or less meant to gauge FD's attitude & philosophy towards potential expansions rather than an accurate assessment of their quality. As such I'm hoping to avoid speculation and hear directly from people in the know (ie: FD staff or people who have concrete evidence). If they're already answered somewhere, well my apologies but some direction would be nice!

1. What's *roughly* the intended scale of each expansion? Let's say on a scale of 0 to 5, with 0 being your regular cosmetic DLC that's prevalent in console games and 5 being a full PC game expansion (ie: Diablo 2 LOD or BG2: Throne of Bhaal), what would the number be?

2. How does FD intend to deal with incompatibilities between those who own expansions & those who don't? Will the player base be cleanly separated or will there exist some form of limited interaction? Also, if there are critical changes to the core mechanics will people without expansions receive some of these changes in a more limited form? For example, say someone who owns the boarding & combat expansion, can he board a ship being flown by someone who doesn't have the expansion? If so, what will happen?

3. Not expecting to get an answer on this but just gonna throw it out: how's a rough estimate for the price of each expansion pack?

Thanks!

 

[M3SS3NG3R]

Bump....anybody?

 

[Tinman]

Bump....anybody?

Anyone? Didn't you ask for an answer from "people in the know" (AKA FD employees)?

I can give it a shoot though since I've been following this game very closely and probably read/seen everything there is to find about it. However, since they haven't really spoken to much about these in detail yet (probably because they want to keep focus on what we ACTUALLY get in the first release) my answers can't be 100%.

1. I would say 4-5 since the expansions will be centered around completely new gameplay mechanics and environments. Some of these already mentioned in the latest newsletter.

When it comes to planet interactions David himself have said this:

Planetary landings won't be a single thing. I think I've said before - it is what is down there that makes planetary landings compelling - and please remember all of this will be after first release of the game.

I imagine we will start with landings on airless moons. You would be able to see heavy industry, craters up close, and ultimately be able to deposit things on the surface (stash cargo or mining machines). Atmospheric worlds are a bigger challenge - whether rocky or gas giant in nature - and a key element there is the atmosphere. They should have rich cloudscapes with lightning, turbulence etc.

The biggest challenge is with what we call 'outdoor worlds'. I would want rich and varied vegetation, wildlife, and so on.

When it comes to first person gameplay they have talked about: FPS combat and boarding, walking around inside stations (with FPS gameplay and other interactions, not just talking to people in bars and such), driving vehicles down on planets, hunting alien wildlife, controlling giant ships through executive control, doing EVAs and repair the ship and so on...

Exactly how these things will be grouped into expansions is unknown right now, but each one is probably going to be a pretty major expansion of possible activities within the game.

2. Based on everything I've read I would say they would try to keep everyone together as much as possible to keep the world alive. Excluding "Ironman mode" of course.

3. They haven't said anything about that yet, but I would expect them to land somewhere around half the price of the full game or slightly above it. All depending on how much development have gone into it of course.

 

[zeq]

I can only speculate, but I will try to explain my understanding of it.
These expansions are things which the devs have said they want to have in the game, but also want to be fully fleshed out features, rather than watered down to fit in the base game. So having lots of new things to do when going down to a planet surface, rather than just landing, fuel scooping or sightseeing, as I believe the previous iteration was mostly limited to. So while their scope is not currently clear, there seems to be a big indicator that they want these addons to be big, and would probably fall as a 4 or 5 on your scale.
As for how they will interact between those that do have it and don't have it? My guess is that it will just be a region barrier. So back to planetary landings, only people who actually have that expansion can go there, but otherwise share the same instances as those who don't. Similarly, I expect with the boarding expansion, you can only board npcs and players with the expansion. Again, this is nothing official, but just what makes logical sense to me. Most of the expansions seem to be opening up new areas to go to, so it seems most logical to not completely separate people, but only the expansion owning players can do the new stuff. Think of it kind of like the Founder's world they mentioned a while ago, in which some group of people (either alpha backers or kickstarter supporters, I can't remember which) have a special system that only they will be able to reach.
As for core mechanics changes? I think there will be a few, at least between the current implementation and the expansion releases. I think they will try to have the most important ones sorted out by the time the game releases, but if any do become necessary, I expect those will become available to everyone, so people still play by the same rules when sharing the same space.
I hope that helps. I know you specifically asked not for speculation, but the reason that is all you can find is because that is all there really is at the moment. These features are expansions because the devs don't want to be thinking about them right now, and instead want to be focusing on developing the core features of the game. The devs have been fairly open with the community, so I expect little more than what they have told us, or has come from the DDF archives, is actually fleshed out enough to give specifics.

 

[forger]

yes, each expansion will be rated as 4-5 with new gameplay mechanics/missions and locations to explore. i am looking forward to thargoids expansion also

the good question is about separation those who buy expansion and who didn't. about landing on planets and walking inside stations it is easy, if you do not have you just have no access to those missions/activities, but what about boarding, probably they will allow everyone move inside their ship but i would like to know developer thought as well on this matter

each expansion price probably will be same/close as the game - 35gbp, but that is just an estimate

 

[kilvenny]

The way the expansions are being articulated currently is different to the way they were twelve months ago. There are more and some have been broken down into multiple aspects. That makes me think they will be cheaper than normal game price. The other factor is how many expansions there will be, there could well be more addons. eg I quite like the idea down the line of the rise of a Secret organisation who have their own navy (new group of ships - potential for different weaponry). I digress. Equally its possible not all might be done.

All I can say is for me it was a no brainer, but then I am a fanboy. If you like the game then it me you would want the expansions.

 

[M3SS3NG3R]

Yeah I guess we don't have enough official words to know anything concrete for sure, yet. I think we're all hoping for each expansion pack being a significant extension that builds on top & integrate with the original game instead of some superficial changes. In that case though it'd be interesting to know if FD wants to avoid fracturing the player base.