The Timescale for 'Walking Around Your Spacecraft & Landing on Planets' Was 2-3 Years

[VR Golgot]

The Timescale for 'Walking Around Your Spacecraft & Landing on Planets' Was Approx 2-3 Years

DB: We’ll build all sorts of additional functionality, like walking around inside your spacecraft, landing on planets, all this sort of thing…

GC: Would you put a ballpark on that? Two, three years?
DB: That sort of time scale.

Planetary Landings Aimed For 'Within a Year of Release' & Hit:

The most notable and anticipated of these is of course seamless planetary landings. Whilst it wouldn’t be sharing anything new with you to confirm this feature post-launch, I can confirm that we hope to implement it within a year of release, if possible:
Sandy: Definitely yes. Hopefully (barring issues) within the first year post-release

'Exiting the Ship' & 'Interiors' Were Planned for the Second PDLC:

...it is the update that will allow players to exit their ship where voice acting will become especially important:

Sandy: We will need some form of voice acting and Voice overs, especially from update 2 onwards (when interiors and first person is available).

Conclusion:

Ok so clearly something went wrong. We can only guess what. The TLDR is probably: Legs difficult

Were there big technical blockers, to do with the core tech, and maybe console compatibility? Were dead-ends pursued that had to be abandoned? Were the devs overstretched due to working on Seasonal features + flagship expansions + rolling GAAS content?

Probably all of the above.


Flip Side:

As painfully slow as the shift to non-Seasonal delivery has been, and as discouraging as it was to learn that they only entered full production in 2018 (IE they hadn't managed to start + maintain a full DLC run in parallel with Horizons). I'm taking the following positives:

• They seem to be through whatever blockers they were struggling with.
• They're focused primarily on the DLC, and making it a big 'all in one' delivery.

TLDR: Game's not dead. Game's adding something chunky finally.



EDIT - Just as an addendum: I'm not suggesting they were aiming to get all the proposed Legs gameplay done inside 3 years. More likely just the first installment of a Seasonal Legs PDLC.

 

[Ezren]

"That sort of time scale".

Is not:

"Yes that is the exact timeframe that I am promising."

It's amazing how deep people will dig and stretch a few words in what they perceive as a full legal document with all the subtext to confirm whatever it is they want it to.

 

[thistle]

Oh god.

 

[VR Golgot]

"That sort of time scale".

Is not:

"Yes that is the exact timeframe that I am promising."

It's amazing how deep people will dig and stretch a few words in what they perceive as a full legal document with all the subtext to confirm whatever it is they want it to.

Sure it's an approximation.

Given that the second PDLC is landing 6 years after launch I think it's still worthy of note though

The more interesting aspect to me is the 'what went wrong' black box in the middle. But given that we can't get that data, I'll settle for looking at the FDev statements that surround it.

And the most interesting aspect to me is that the DLC is finally coming, and likely in a better form than it would have as a sequential Seasonal delivery.

Not sure why any of the above led you to talk about stretchy legal docs

 

[Crank Larson]

No.

 

[Ezren]

Sure it's an approximation.

Given that the second PDLC is landing 6 years after launch I think it's still worthy of note though

The more interesting aspect to me is the 'what went wrong' black box in the middle. But given that we can't get that data, I'll settle for looking at the FDev statements that surround it.

And the most interesting aspect to me is that the DLC is finally coming, and likely in a better form than it would have as a sequential Seasonal delivery.

Not sure why any of the above led you to talk about stretchy legal docs

I guess interpretation goes both ways for you, since you pull a lot of meaning out just about nothing, but can't seem to get meaning out of what I said.

Maybe if I put it in a quote.

"That sort of time scale".

Is not:

"Yes that is the exact timeframe that I am promising."

Especially considering there was a lot of talking between those two quotes that you mashed together. Including the line immediately preceding:

DB: [laughs] It will take a while to get there though.

 

[VR Golgot]

I guess interpretation goes both ways for you, since you pull a lot of meaning out just about nothing, but can't seem to get meaning out of what I said.

Maybe if I put it in a quote.



Especially considering there was a lot of talking between those two quotes that you mashed together. Including the line immediately preceding:

Lol, I mean I included the link for context, and I phrased it as 'Approx 2-3 Years' at that point. (Admittedly I made the thread title a bit more pithy to get a conversation going )

I'm not at any point suggesting there was some 'promise' of a 2-3 year delivery for 2 PDLCs, as you suggest in your first jumbled post. I'm just suggesting that seems to have been the general target.

If you don't see the mismatch between that fuzzy plan and what actually happened as interesting (IE delivery essentially being double that time period), that's fine.

As I say, it's the fine detail of why it might have happened, and what the repercussions are (positive and negative), that interest me most.

Now feel free to say some other unconnected things about entitled gamers or whatever

 

[Ezren]

Really making that bold observation: things that did not happen didn't happen. They didn't hit that timeframe that wasn't promised in that interview, I can't imagine why.

This is about one step away from wondering why they didn't do things they never mentioned doing by three years ago. Where are the subterranean condos we weren't promised? Very interesting.

Now feel free to say some other unconnected things about entitled gamers or whatever

Haven't you embarrassed yourself enough?

 

[Viajero]

I guess we could have also asked “what went so well with Horizons?” Given that it seems to have beaten that very rough indication by a factor of 2 or 3

Unless, that is, we asume the statement was strictly literal and pertaining to the complete totality of FDEV plans for ED in just under 2-3 years? Which seems a bit over the top to be honest.

 

[zimms]

I think it's still true that it takes them 2-3 years, but they only started (full) production in mid 2018.

 

[Good Whiskey]

Where are the subterranean condos we weren't promised?

Good question. Also, where are the things we were promissed that have nothing to do with Elite, huh?

 

[VR Golgot]

I guess we could have also asked “what went so well with Horizons?” Given that it seems to have beaten that very rough indication by a factor of 2 or 3

Unless, that is, we asume the statement was strictly literal and pertaining to the complete totality of FDEV plans for ED in just under 2-3 years? Which seems a bit over the top to be honest.

In context it reads easily as pertaining to both a Legs & a Planding DLC having been delivered. Given the old roadmap of the time split both Plandings & Legs into 2 DLCs each it suggests to me they were thinking of having one of each out by approx 2018.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Sure it's an approximation.

Given that the second PDLC is landing 6 years after launch I think it's still worthy of note though

The more interesting aspect to me is the 'what went wrong' black box in the middle. But given that we can't get that data, I'll settle for looking at the FDev statements that surround it.

And the most interesting aspect to me is that the DLC is finally coming, and likely in a better form than it would have as a sequential Seasonal delivery.

Not sure why any of the above led you to talk about stretchy legal docs

Are you interested in why they made beyond instead of going straight to space legs?

Yeah interesting question. If anything, my guess would be it was because of the delay in horizons. It took 2 years instead of 1.. something like that could validly trigger a restructure of things. Im not sure how many staff they had available in those years, and im pretty sure at one point jwe became the priority for frontier as a whole. Maybe some permutation of those.

 

[VR Golgot]

Really making that bold observation: things that did not happen didn't happen. They didn't hit that timeframe that wasn't promised in that interview, I can't imagine why.

This is about one step away from wondering why they didn't do things they never mentioned doing by three years ago. Where are the subterranean condos we weren't promised? Very interesting.


Haven't you embarrassed yourself enough?

It's not a 'promise', we've established that. (You keep bringing it up for some bizarre reason though. Kind of embarrassing ).

It's pretty clearly a general intent though for the paid expansions. Why you'd seek to smoosh it down to an absolute nothing is intriguing.

 

[NeilF]

"That sort of time scale".

Is not:

"Yes that is the exact timeframe that I am promising."

It's amazing how deep people will dig and stretch a few words in what they perceive as a full legal document with all the subtext to confirm whatever it is they want it to.

Now now... The OP used the term "approx" to described Braben's use of "about that timescale". He's hardly building the strawman you're suggesting he's guilty of...

Now of course plans aimed years ahead are not cast iron, and we need only consider Fleet Carriers for how accurate FD's time scales can be, but the OP was simply making conversation piece and being fairly honestly about how non-committal (approx.) it was.

 

[VR Golgot]

Are you interested in why they made beyond instead of going straight to space legs?

Yeah interesting question. If anything, my guess would be it was because of the delay in horizons. It took 2 years instead of 1.. something like that could validly trigger a restructure of things. Im not sure how many staff they had available in those years, and im pretty sure at one point jwe became the priority for frontier as a whole. Maybe some permutation of those.

Beyond seems to be pretty clearly part of their improvised shift to Seasons from 2.4 on. (The hole in the middle seems to have been designed to allow the full production on the PDLC to start etc). But yeah, I suspect Legs delays are a major aspect that predate even the Season-shift aspects.

I don't buy the 'other franchises have stolen resources' argument. FDev's general staffing expansions have easily mopped up the difference IMO. (As a basic overview, they started with approx 240 staff when ED started dev, and have approx 500+ now). FDev have also regularly maintained that staffing was unaffected for the bulk of that period ([1],[2],[3],[4],[5]).

There are also some interesting reasons to believe ED is best resourced of the franchises by a considerable margin, IE:

According to Liberum's report last November, FDev's dev breakdown (total staff 500+) is as follows:

FDEV current developers 407
Liberum assumption headcount breakdown

• Elite Dangerous 120
• Planet Coaster 40
• JWE 40
• Planet Zoo 45
• Major licenced IP 60
• Total developers working on announced games 305
• Implied developers working on future games 102

Note that the above information was from before this official F1 licence announcement, so the "Major licenced IP" referenced in that table is a different game franchise:

+

• If FDev's claim of ~100 dedicated devs is correct, as the community visit seems to confirm nicely.
• And we assume of the 500+ staffing there are approx ~400 devs (I used CIG as a rough comparison here - IE 500+ staff, 410 devs)
• With 4 existing properties being maintained (ED, PC, JWE, PZ)
• And 3 more in in-house production

My amateur conclusions from that are:

• ED has roughly 25% of their total dev count on it, despite being only '14%' of their portfolio (1 of 7).
• It's got strong support for a maintained, existing, title. Likely stronger than the other published titles (as if they all had ~100 devs allocated, that would be almost the entire dev team used up )

Which kind of leaves us with: technical blockers + technical debt, and the delays implicit in the shift to 'all in one' delivery, as the liable culprits for broader delivery slippage.

 

[CMDR J Sparrow]

 

[zombieapocalypse]

The radio silence from FDev is really bringing out all the nutjobs and conspiracy theorists lately. Good for popcorns sales, I suppose.

 

[Viajero]

In context it reads easily as pertaining to both a Legs & a Planding DLC having been delivered. Given the old roadmap of the time split both Plandings & Legs into 2 DLCs each it suggests to me they were thinking of having one of each out by approx 2018.

That theory really does still not fly with other FDEV statements suggesting a long term plan of 10+years etc, unless you take that very rough indication as strictly literal in that the most significant and probably complex elements of FDEV plans for ED were to be delivered under a third of that long term plan

 

[VR Golgot]

The radio silence from FDev is really bringing out all the nutjobs and conspiracy theorists lately. Good for popcorns sales, I suppose.

Erm, says the guy with that avatar . Damnn.

There's really nothing conspiratorial about suggesting the PDLCs have hit issues and are being delivered at a slower frequency than expected.