An interesting take on things, thank you.
I wonder when we'll start to get some drips of information.. Perhaps nothing until the end of the year. Be curious to see how that 'leak' from before pans out too.
Still betting on some form of space legs
Anyway, we'll see..
Stay with your feet on the ground. I have a feeling the new era is likely to be carriers and ice worlds, basically what they should have delivered half a year ago.
That means the carriers are out of update 4 and will be delivered as a paid content next year? For real?
No, that's not what was said.
This sounds like "we're taking out content from Beyond ch.4 and putting it in a future, paid update".
Man, this is disappointing.
Just to clarify that's absolutely not what's being said, or being done.
The future content that has started in production is a whole new era/chapter/milestone in Elite. Much like Horizons was and like Beyond was/is. Please rest assured that this post is not suggesting that we are taking content and moving it to paid for content later. Hope that helps.
I know my beloved Elite Dangerous and No Man's Sky (which I have too) are not the same games ... but none the less, I find my self very impressed with what the Hello Games team (a 10th the size of less) has done with NMS over the last two years versus the progress which Frontier has made.
WARNING: Giant effort post
TLDR: The 2020 DLC is definitely a big, concerted run. Seemingly the longest contiguous period of full production since pre-launch.
---
The Production Dates Are Similar:
We don't know exactly when 'full production' started on ED, but we do know that it hadn't started prior to the Kickstarter:
If we take the Kickstarter 'thumbs up' as an approximate start point for full production, then the dates look like this:
APPROXIMATE 'FULL PRODUCTION' DATES:
Elite Dangerous:
Approx: 2 Years
- Kickstarter crossed the line Jan 2013
- Game launched Dec 2014
2020 DLC
Approx: 2 Years
But How Long Was The Pre-Production?
Don't have enough info to judge timescales here, but both seem to have years of skunkwork attached:
Elite: Dangerous:
If you believe this Guinness Book of Records entry, work started about 17 years ago . Certainly FDev seem to have done prep work for 'Elite 4' at various points. (Here they are talking about Legs in 2001). That seems a bit silly though. Only the more recent years of skunkworking are likely to be of technical relevance. So: Unclear. Probably substantial. Probably less than 17 years
2020 DLC:
There's been various talk of them prototyping the expansions. From the familiar proc gen clouds & the leggy mock-ups of pre-launch, to more concrete assertions like: "We have work going on on Season 3 and Season 4 already..." / 'We have ongoing work on planets, including atmospheres, planetary life, walking about...' etc
Dedicated Elite Staffing:
Was the staffing comparable? That's pretty hard to nail down too. But it seems pretty possible that they're in similar ballparks:
Currently:
100+ dev team with the majority focusing on the new era. (More sourcing on the dedicated staffing over recent years here: [1],[2],[3],[4]).
(Their broader staffing scenario is approx 440 staff, with a 4th franchise likely in full production (expected 2019) and a 5th & 6th seemingly in some form of production.)
During the Initial Dev Run:
Their overall staffing ranged from approx 240 to 270 over that period. They had 5 prior projects on the go:
Given that JWE scaled up to 75-100 staffing, you'd imagine those three other park games took up significant resources.
- Zoo Tycoon (Xbox) - Nov 2013
- Coaster Crazy Deluxe (WiiU / iOS) - Nov 2013
- Tales from Deep Space (Kindle Fire etc) - Nov 2014
- Screamride (Xbox) - March 2015 (After which they moved straight on to Planet Coaster)
- (Not sure on the fifth project. Poss failed?)
Ultimately ED's dedicated staffing for that period seems to be unknown. However it seems unlikely they had much more than 100 staff on the project, given the 'work for hire' projects on their slate at the time.
The Longest Dev Runs Since Launch:
The longest I'm aware of is the small team on the Cmdr Creator for 'way over a year'. The Plandings tech itself went from R&D to delivery in a year.
(Reasons Not To Get Carried Away):
- The game is doubtlessly an absolute ball of code now. Adding to that, rather than building from scratch, will definitely be a lot harder, and mean fewer additions emerge from the dev period.
- The launch title went live with loads of gaps in it . Two years isn't the longest time in the world to innovate in.
- This is mainly guesswork
They are writing a new version of the game. 5 thousand quatloos, anyone?
The Next Era update will be in-game content
Hi Golgot
After reading through all of this, it is now obvious that the new expansion will be space unicorns. If we are really lucky we will get space cats too. Unfortunately, there will be no place for space dogs though, they are too difficult to do.
If it’s not fully realised earth likes or legs with fully explorable stations I’m going to feel a little let down,which is completely mental as all of that seems impossible.
To place holders!I just hope they aren't adding more potential to the game, and are realising some of the massive amount it's had since release instead.
But that likely wouldn't please the marketting team, or the purse string holders so... I find it unlikely.
Here's to a new bunch of placeholders with amazing potential for the future.
Then six months later there will be an announcement that the servers are being switched off / Frontier will be sold / DB will retire.
So you’re saying offline mode,interesting.Given the timescale I'm setting the bar at full atmospheric functionality up to and possibly including Earth-likes, and spacelegs
The DLC will cost £100 on initial release to consume the LEP value not yet allocated then will be reduced to £20 a fortnight later to encourage people to actually buy it. The base game & Horizons DLC will be available by then for £2.99 each, the Premium starter pack with a bunch of skins will be a fiver.
Then six months later there will be an announcement that the servers are being switched off / Frontier will be sold / DB will retire.
.....and they will release all the server snapshots so the community can run their own set ups, as they said they would if they ever turn the servers off.