What aren't they telling us about?

[Hamerstein]

Yet I look at the way the mmo market spawned so many weak clones and saturated the market, eventually turning to F2P/B2P models because they couldn't compete on equal terms with the daddy of them all.

It happened with the likes of the zombie survival game too. Even the Arma 2 mod DayZ was rapidly copied in sickening fashion, what did they call it? 'WarZ'?

Cosmos makes a good point here.

It's not so much a matter of having the features of ED, but being able to do them well. So while Michael, Sandro, Mike and the team might be happy to talk about having features, you're never going to draw them out on discussions about how it's done (technically) or the minutiae that makes it special.

Timing is important, but doing it better than the other guys is even more so.

WoW wasn't the first MMO to be released by a long way, there were many MMOs prior to it. Everquest was the first that reached a huge player base, probably because it coincided with the first wave of mass cheap internet access (prior to which you would be paying premium rates for an ISP).

But what WoW managed to do was offer the same accessibility as EQ, UO, AO, AC and make itself even more casual player friendly, whilst still offering a high difficulty for the hard core gamer. Other games attempted the magic formula before and since, but no game has done it as well.

 

[Pyros]

Well, a friend of mine drinks in a pub in Cambridge and he is quite friendly with the barmaid there. This barmaid, right, well, her mother works in the hairdressers where this bloke goes on a regular basis, right, and he reckons he is the brother of the woman who buys David's jumpers (or clips Josh Atack's toenails, I can't quite remember). Anyway, she swears that FD are looking into OR (you remember? that hospital show with George Clooless, before he got famous, an' that?). So I think it's pretty clear that "Ambulance Driver" is going to be finding it's way into the games career ladder. Expect an announcement soon. And if that's not gem of a tabloid-worthy piece of goss' then I don't know what is!

I can see that info becoming "An internal source from FD guaranteed..."

OT, FD has been quite transparent with the ideas and game approach. Some surprises do and will come along, but we are far from the secretive needs of the 80s

 

[Calebe]

As an FYI it was said there will be no NDA for the Alpha or Beta. As Ashley said it would be near impossible for them to police it so they won't even try.

Also as an aside even with no NDA the time schedule is so tight, with Alpha in December, first Beta in January and 2nd Beta in February and release in March, it would be hard for any company to copy their design, implement it and release a new game in that 3 month time span and get it done right. Sure they could copy a lot of the idea's but ED will be out by then so it won't matter.

It is still surprising to me they can make some huge game altering game changes as in the free roaming exploring of a system in such a short time. It speaks a lot of the quality of the game engine and more importantly the talent of the programmers and developers.

Calebe

 

[scrufferpops]

Hi Neil.
Firstly welcome to the forum. As your your question, yes it is possible Frontier may be holding some details about the game back (possibly because they are still to be worked out as yet like the latest announcement of Oculus Rift support), but to be honest, if you check out all the discussions on here, you will find a massive amount of detail about many aspects of the game. There is so much in fact that overall it will tell you just how massive Elite Dangerous will be. As for worry about ideas and or features being borrowed, well (for example), it's one thing to say, yes Frontier Developments are going to build a procedurally created galaxy, it's quite another to actually do it

David has extensive experience in this area as does his design team. They will know things about procedural generation and how it will operate that will never be seen by normal players of the game. The real "magic" if you will, will happen underneath the hood of the game with the player seeing the end result. Sounds like magic to me.

Bloody well said. Now I sound sycophantic don't I? Well anyhow, I mean it.

 

[scrufferpops]

I think it'll be a GREAT idea to post beta videos on youtube, in fact.
By then the game is almost complete (1 month away if to schedule), so not much worry about games nicking ideas.
But the main point is it'll likely generate ALOT of interest in the game itself with new blood. That would be ACE.

 

[Kerrash]

I think it'll be a GREAT idea to post beta videos on youtube, in fact.
By then the game is almost complete (1 month away if to schedule), so not much worry about games nicking ideas.
But the main point is it'll likely generate ALOT of interest in the game itself with new blood. That would be ACE.

I am hoping you are right. It would be great to see the game from everyone else's perspective too. I love watching playthroughs almost as much as playing