State of the game

[DeletedUser191218]

Let us use a metaphor.

During the beta Elite was the takeaway stall around the corner, offering decent food but not what you'd call a complete meal. Plus, you'd quickly get bored of the same 3 things. Mostly, you went there because there was nothing comparabe in town.

Today the stall has turned into a restaurant: the decor has been remade, the menus look more professional, the chairs are comfortable, and there's a number of new side dishes and desserts. But the main courses, although better presented, are pretty much what you remember from the street food days. It is mostly interesting because it has a regular clientele that livens up the place.

But they never promised more than 3 bland menu options. They may have said they would provide more, that they intended to provide more, that more is coming soon. They may have even given a firm date on when it was coming and failed to deliver it (and months later still haven't). But I don't think they physically used the word 'promise', so I guess that's okay?

 

[sollisb]

Seriously, what is all this horse manure about they promised or didn't promise??

It makes no difference, What does make a difference is 'reasonable expectation'..

One could at this stage of the Elite development cycle, reasonably expect that anything mentioned in previous talking head streams would be in the game at this stage.

Mining has been overhauled and is brilliant. Exploration is now a few extra screen to accomplish what we had before, and engineering is a grind fest. As far as new ships go, we have many, but 3 of them are simple copies of each other for no other reason than to up the shop sales.

Thargoids are a separate game in USSs. Every Thursday, during server downtime, they magically attack a station which is then labelled as 'attacked' when the servers come back up. Basically a badly implemented joke of a design.

Engineers are a method to improve your ships' modules at the expense of game time spent looking for random USSs that may spawn randomly and may randomly contain the item you need.

In comparison to SC the other main Rival we could say SC has not gone public but has a wealth of the things Elite lacks, but, Elite has gone public and now suffers from being rushed and based on so much randomness that is a roll of the dice each step of the way.

In relation to NMS, Elite is graphically way ahead, in relation to content Elite is an utter failure.

All above my personal opinion.

 

[VR Golgot]

Hello all.
Once upon a time, in a different life(before I had a majestic spawn who is now 2.5 years old whom I can't wait to play this game with), I was an avid beta tester. I probably clocked 1,000 hours before I decided that I didn't want to burn out on the game before all of the fun stuff got added. I am contemplating returning to the game(let's be honest, it's a serious commitment to consider lol).

I am completely naive and google searching "ED current state of game" really didn't have anything relevant and I'm not sure I want to dig through years worth of casual updates just to find the pertinent info.

Would any of the always-helpful community here be willing to make a comparison list of the things that were promised to us and the things that have been delivered to us? I can't seem to find any roadmap or any other list that would have this information, if there is one, please point me to it!
I know some big things have been added, but Horizons is still the only released "expansion"?

Just want to know some basic information so I can make an informed decision if now is the right time to jump back into the game.

Thank you!!!

Edit*- added a screenshot for posterity.

Hey OP, try BarkingMad's blog overview (see menu sections)

Cmdr. Barking Mad

Read all of the posts by Cmdr. Barking Mad on Elite: Odyssey

elitedangerous2016.wordpress.com

The TLDR is: We've been on free updates for a good while now, since Horizons ended, with the 2nd expansion slated for an eye-stalk-popping 'late 2020'. (This apparent leak suggests it's Legs + FPS + Thargs + base building). Key updates in the last year have just been a mining revamp ('splosions), an explo mini-game interface, & a slow arms race with the Thargs. Lots of QoL added that improve the vibe and small actions in the main, but things are slow-burning generally.

CQC kinda works though with the new matchmaking, ace in VR

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

Let us use a metaphor.

During the beta Elite was the takeaway stall around the corner, offering decent food but not what you'd call a complete meal. Plus, you'd quickly get bored of the same 3 things. Mostly, you went there because there was nothing comparabe in town.

Today the stall has turned into a restaurant: the decor has been remade, the menus look more professional, the chairs are comfortable, and there's a number of new side dishes and desserts. But the main courses, although better presented, are pretty much what you remember from the street food days. It is mostly interesting because it has a regular clientele that livens up the place.

although sometimes when your order the beef you might get lamb, there is a complaint box where you need to write your detailed account of the complaint onto a form and when enough restaurant visitors have experienced the same miss order and voted for it on the restaurant co©k up board they will have a chat with their chef to fix it.

until then people will occasionally get served lamb instead of beef, the response from the waiter is usually "were working on it... enjoy your lamb though"

 

[TheSynopticVision]

although sometimes when your order the beef you might get lamb, there is a complaint box where you need to write your detailed account of the complaint onto a form and when enough restaurant visitors have experienced the same miss order and voted for it on the restaurant co©k up board they will have a chat with their chef to fix it.

until then people will occasionally get served lamb instead of beef, the response from the waiter is usually "were working on it... enjoy your lamb though"

Or the times when the automatic door has some kind of malfunctioning, and people cannot enter and eat at all until the management gets the technician to fix it.

Turns out this metaphor can be indefinitely expanded

 

[Kenneth McGrew]

Or the times when the automatic door has some kind of malfunctioning, and people cannot enter and eat at all until the management gets the technician to fix it.

Turns out this metaphor can be indefinitely expanded

i feel a spin off coming on where you need to "unlock" the pasta menu by bringing the chef 15 onions, 2 crates of tescos finest brandy and a block of cheese, with the caveat that you can only deliver one onion at a time and only on a Tuesday between 14:00-14:02

oh the experience will be amazing!

you want cheese on that pizza? well you need to unlock the cheese chef first!

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

Seriously, what is all this horse manure about they promised or didn't promise??
It makes no difference,

I have one generic answer and a personal one to your question. To avoid confusion I will split them in two posts.

Generic one:
Marketing sells you a product at the price of a game that can do everything they promise. But the actual game is at only 40% of its full development. The rest will come Soon TM
In the next years the game development rise only to 50% and this +10% is something different from what they advertised. The most common fear at this point is that also the remaining 40% will not be what you expected.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

Seriously, what is all this horse manure about they promised or didn't promise??

It makes no difference, What does make a difference is 'reasonable expectation'..

One could at this stage of the Elite development cycle, reasonably expect that anything mentioned in previous talking head streams would be in the game at this stage.

Mining has been overhauled and is brilliant. Exploration is now a few extra screen to accomplish what we had before, and engineering is a grind fest. As far as new ships go, we have many, but 3 of them are simple copies of each other for no other reason than to up the shop sales.

Thargoids are a separate game in USSs. Every Thursday, during server downtime, they magically attack a station which is then labelled as 'attacked' when the servers come back up. Basically a badly implemented joke of a design.

Engineers are a method to improve your ships' modules at the expense of game time spent looking for random USSs that may spawn randomly and may randomly contain the item you need.

In comparison to SC the other main Rival we could say SC has not gone public but has a wealth of the things Elite lacks, but, Elite has gone public and now suffers from being rushed and based on so much randomness that is a roll of the dice each step of the way.

In relation to NMS, Elite is graphically way ahead, in relation to content Elite is an utter failure.

All above my personal opinion.

Here is the personal answer:

I want to be vey honest. At the beginning I bought ED only for atmospheric planets.
I started my research in 2014.
Typing "Space Game Planet Landing" in google gave me few results:

• Infinity Battlescape (it probably had a different name at that time) with some video showing a spaceship flying from space down to the planet surface throught the atmosphere.
• No Man's Sky with the cool E3 demo video.
• Elite Dangerous with Braben talking about atmospheric planets.

Few months later ED was released and it was the only one available so I bought it. I remember in the past I played Frontier II with atmospheric planets so I was sure that they were supposed to come SOON TM.

Then Horizons came, shoked it was only about airless planets (I thought who cares of barren worlds?) and the Moon was not even landable.
Ok next year, I though... One year later Horizons delayed. Two years later Thargoids and Beyond announced. Four years later still no info at all about atmospheric planets.

So to conclude all this "biowaste" (as they call it in 3305) is because they promised too much at the beginning and they were not able to be consistent with their own roadmap. Sean Murray learned the lesson, Frontier not yet.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Is it really so hard to go to the patch thread and read what changedy. Obviously opinion is going to vastly differ. Here - have example: 2.1 power creep ruined the game, sucked the fun out of it and no changes were made to alleviate.

 

[B1rdy]

That's how I was sold to the game... wings, powerplay... yay... but no one mentioned it was in reality an 80's game remake with ... nothing else but new shiny visuals on it. I know I am getting toxic.. but hell yes, why deny it. Marketing of ED was really unhonest. No way to unmake this.

Actually it had been said during the kickstarter campaign, that FDev "only" will deliver a remake of '84s Elite at the end of 2014, which then should be expanded upon.

 

[VR SenseiMatty]

That's how I was sold to the game... wings, powerplay... yay... but no one mentioned it was in reality an 80's game remake with ... nothing else but new shiny visuals on it. I know I am getting toxic.. but hell yes, why deny it. Marketing of ED was really unhonest. No way to unmake this.

Not even that. Consider Frontier II had atmospheric planets