Why can we only Land on Barren Planets after almost 5 years?

[VR jefranklin18]

Talking for myself of course. Since 2.0 I've always been disappointed by each update (except partially Beyond 3.3) because I've always been waiting for more planets to explore, more planetary gameplay and atmospheric planets. I've never found interesting BGS power play c&p engineer guardians and thargoids... I'm here only for the planetary stuff

I was pretty much the same: multicrew held no interest for me, the first iteration of the Engineers I pretty much avoided and don't get me started on the Guardians and Thargoids.... However, I was confident that Frontier were building towards an interesting future and expected big things from FX17 when all we got was Beyond and the two things they touted the most were pulled with one due this year (but no indication about what they're like) and the other with no timescale.

Coupled with Frontier's poor communications approach, my time in ED (which is a hell of a lot less than it used to be despite playing FE2/FFE right up until the release of ED) is despite Frontier not because of them.

 

[fu9ar]

I don't know about NMS's latest update. I do know that the mining and exploration update was great, and some of the little "shiny things" they released this year make some of the "core gameplay" more pleasant for me. I like what Elite is for the most part. I think your problem is your vision of what you want it to be doesn't align with what the developers want it to be. If you like NMS so much, nobody is forcing you to play Elite instead.

There isnt even a 'ten year plan' to begin with, that has been debunked ages ago. The idea that certain aspects are terrible because its part of a super secret master plan that will make everything awesome eventually is pretty much baseless religion.

So you are denying that Elite was released as a minimum viable product with a plan to continually develop and refine it over a period of years ( let's say about ten )?

 

[Jools]

There's no indication that there is an overall master-plan to bring all these disparate parts together. So you can repeat "It's only half way through the Ten Year Plan" like I'm some kind of green newb, but it's not credible at all. Sorry.

Precisely why i don`t believe in a 10 year plan. Does the mess of disjointed pieces that we have look like a part of a coherent plan? DDF looked like a plan. but what we have, other than 2.0 everything feels like random desperate reactions to the market and company policy changes rather than coherent thoughtful game design

 

[Ian Skippy]

So you are denying that Elite was released as a minimum viable product with a plan to continually develop and refine it over a period of years ( let's say about ten )?

No, I am telling you there is no 10 year plan and your 'they are only halfway' statement is baseless.

 

[fu9ar]

Oh... so your "feelings" are your evidence base for these claims? Mmmhmm. Yup. yawn

 

[Einar Donarsson]

Answer is easy: They are to buisy making Dinosaur and Zoogames for children cause they probably make more moneyssss.

 

[Juniper]

I don't know about NMS's latest update. I do know that the mining and exploration update was great, and some of the little "shiny things" they released this year make some of the "core gameplay" more pleasant for me. I like what Elite is for the most part. I think your problem is your vision of what you want it to be doesn't align with what the developers want it to be. If you like NMS so much, nobody is forcing you to play Elite instead.

No, my problem is that there is apparently no vision - nothing coherent or obvious anyway. If there was, they would follow these updates to their logical end points and address those at the same time - but they don't.

1200+ hours in Elite on Steam.
300+ hours in NMS.

I know which game I prefer on a purely conceptual level (realistic galaxy, nice spaceships, good flight model, etc), but my interest is waning because other games are catching up and have overtaken significantly in some areas. "New Era" has a great deal of catching up to do IMO.

For me, that's all down to update scope.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

You are nitpicking about irrelevant nonsense that should be the lowest item on the priority list. Seriously, you are complaining about the rank systems, all of which are absolutely meaningless except for access to the Founder's World. They should be the absolute last thing that FDev polishes up, after everything else is a good game.

to you maybe... The Elite ranking system is a cornerstone of the entire franchise and I for one absolutely hate that it is essentially killed off now.

there may be more to elite dangerous than past games............. but the journey to elite is meant to be a massive part of the game.

at this point imo the best hope for 2020 elite is essentially a new game... start from scratch using the assets already iin the game - amongst others, and use what was learned to make a new elite game and, where FD think stiill fits with the vision, revisit the core concepts outlined in 2013 which were largely never really implemented.
Possibly keep the current ED as well, but maybe go all in on the sandbox nature of it... and put any new assets where possible in the new game into the sandbox as well, and people who buy the new game automatically get the new toys in the old sandbox to play with.

 

[fu9ar]

Maybe like if you think that getting points is the cornerstone of Pac Man

 

[Hank]

Wow, this has gotten to be a real debate. Well, my wok popcorn is ready now. I will enjoy.

Have a nice day
GL HF Commanders

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Oh... so your "feelings" are your evidence base for these claims? Mmmhmm. Yup. yawn

Actually, you are responsible for showing that there is a 10 year plan.

 

[Kubicide]

There isnt even a 'ten year plan' to begin with, that has been debunked ages ago. The idea that certain aspects are terrible because its part of a super secret master plan that will make everything awesome eventually is pretty much baseless religion.

This is true.

OP: The game you see is all they could develop - FDev lacked the capability to create more. It is what it is.

 

[Kubicide]

Answer is easy: They are to buisy making Dinosaur and Zoogames for children cause they probably make more moneyssss.

This is also probably true.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

I suspect a lot more players are playing NMS this last week than ED though. I don't think Elite will die a sudden and horrible death, but it will dwindle in players, and to get players back, you need new and shiny things... always and continuously. Software rarely die suddenly. They tend to die in a whimper.

The same will happen between every update. The numbers dwindle until the release a new update. The numbers surge up again directly afterwards and then slowly dwindle. Pretty much like any other gsme. I am sure there are a lot of ED players playing NMS at the moment, but I expect them to come back after the next update or the one after or maybe even sooner when they realise that NMS hasn't actually changed much. They have given you ways to minimise the grind, but then left you with virtually nothing else to do, because the only reason to go around the planets was to grind out materials.

And if the big update for ED next year is space legs or atmospherics then I suspect there will be big surge of old and new players.

 

[kilvenny]

My personal, but probably incorrect view, is that the developments are shoe horned into the available development time. ie they know how many hours are available to develop given available resources and the scheduled time to release; the design is adapted so it can be done in that time frame. This avoids developers being in permanent crunch and allows them to keep closely to release schedules. It's the downside of having decent planning and being able to estimate properly.

Most of what the forum complains about falls under design issues where we expect more than we get. There are bugs but fundamentally our issues are down to missing or perceived incomplete functionality which has its roots in design. I think they are a talented team doing their best to a budget. In hindsight it might have been better to stick to annual or biannual releases, but this was FD's first self publish and regular updates maintain interest. Regular updates mean less wiggle room and more likelihood of compromised design.

DB has a vision, but the team are constrained too budgets. The players bought into the vision and expect its delivery. However this is not a space game with 300M USD prefunding!

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Full production started while Beyond was still in development so:
[SPECULATION MODE ON]
FDEV has got 2 teams:
Team 1: with a lot of experienced developers for full production projects
Team 2: with less people, most of them new employees with scholastic experience and interns managed by some more experienced guys, for small contents and updates.

ED was developed by Team 1. After the initial game release FDEV created Team 2 who kicked-in for smaller updates while Team 1 was working on Horizons 2.0.
After the Horizons 2.0 release, Team 2 kicked-in again and Team 1 moved to other projects (theme parks, jurassic bla bla).
Since then we're left with Team 2.
During 2018 Team 1 apparently started the full production of the New Era, so ED is bound to stay with Team 2 for another year and a half.
[SPECULATION MODE OFF]

That would be my guess too, except it’s not team one and team 2, the alpha team goes and works on the newest momentum project they’re on internally.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

I suspect a lot more players are playing NMS this last week than ED though. I don't think Elite will die a sudden and horrible death, but it will dwindle in players, and to get players back, you need new and shiny things... always and continuously. Software rarely die suddenly. They tend to die in a whimper.

First space game to do it. I’m planning on coming back for the patches for sure.

No mans sky offers a package of exploration that I never expected. Especially after frontiers try hard go at elites last year.

 

[NeilF]

The thing is that I can look at any part of any game, conceive of something in my mind that is better, and say that 'it should be fairly obvious' that what I want is better than reality. Well, yeah, sure. I am not arguing that you can think of something better. What I am saying is that at some point we all have to learn to accept that fantasy beats reality.No space game ever has done what you apparently think is the bare minimum required to satisfy your mining demands. So if you will be disappointed if FD won't meet or exceed your dreams, then yes, you will be disappointed. You wont like space legs be cause you can imagine a cooler version of it. You wont like atmo planets because you can imagine a cooler version of it. Whatever FD does, you, me and literally everyone on this planet can dream up something cooler.

Those concerns will not prove 'groundless', but you may reassess your concerns.

Understood, but when there are clear simple needless issues with design, that undoubtly should have been pretty clear on paper, and surely were very obvious during internal testing! So where does that leave us?

eg:-

1. The mechanics are so needlessly skewed sub-surface missiles are all but pointless. Why?
2. The mechanics are so needlessly skewed the PWA is all but pointless. Why?
3. The mechanics are so skewed, meaningful Hotsposts' CRs/hr and their associated depletion is needlessly squandered.

It's not simply expecting some fantasy, or dreaming up some platinum solution never mind the development cost. It's simply expecting some considered design to be delivered into the game. It's expecting some involved gameplay mechanics at no cost other than good design from the outset. ie: Getting Sub-Surface deposits to be a meaningful part of mining would almost certainly have been nothing more than good design consideration early on. Likewise with the PWA's behaviour and making Hotspots more meaningful and interesting with their depletion.

ie: So all of the above issues (& others) would have been very easy to address on paper, or worse, during internal testing... But nope! So we're left with needless half-baked mechanics. And we've seen these sort of design issues over and over. IMHO it's an ongoing issue/theme from a management/design point of view with ED. Which is worrying given supposedly FDs huge development for ED going on right now. How many needless issues are there going to be with that, given seemingly the same management and designers?

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

Understood, but when there are clear simple needless issues with design, that undoubtly should have been pretty clear on paper, and surely were very obvious during internal testing! So where does that leave us?

eg:-

1. The mechanics are so needlessly skewed sub-surface missiles are all but pointless. Why?
2. The mechanics are so needlessly skewed the PWA is all but pointless. Why?
3. The mechanics are so skewed, meaningful Hotsposts' CRs/hr and their associated depletion is needlessly squandered.

It's not simply expecting some fantasy, or dreaming up some platinum solution never mind the development cost. It's simply expecting some considered design to be delivered into the game. It's expecting some involved gameplay mechanics at no cost other than good design from the outset. ie: Getting Sub-Surface deposits to be a meaningful part of mining would almost certainly have been nothing more than good design consideration early on. Likewise with the PWA's behaviour and making Hotspots more meaningful and interesting with their depletion.

ie: So all of the above issues (& others) would have been very easy to address on paper, or worse, during internal testing... But nope! So we're left with needless half-baked mechanics. And we've seen these sort of design issues over and over. IMHO it's an ongoing issue/theme from a management/design point of view with ED. Which is worrying given supposedly FDs huge development for ED going on right now. How many needless issues are there going to be with that, given seemingly the same management and designers?

I think you’ve highlighted the main issue,i’d consider mining feature complete you are using it as an example of how broken the game is.

 

[NeilF]

I think you’ve highlighted the main issue,i’d consider mining feature complete you are using it as an example of how broken the game is.

Fair enough... But I'd first suggest there's a danger of you misrepresenting me with, "you are using it as an example of how broken the game is."

I'm highlighting how IMHO, how (needlessly) poor the management and design of ED has been over the past four or so years at times, including even a recent significant development, such as Mining 2.0.

So if you feel my points about Mining 2.0 are unfair or unfounded, that fine. But I do suspect for example, many people mining might from time to time question why is this middle tier of mining, "sub-surface" deposits, so (needlessly) pointless? Why wasn't it balanced so it's a viable/worthwhile feature? Or why is the PWA not very useful at doing much more than motherlode->motherlode->motherlode?

Ultimately, the mining mechanics could easily have given a far better result IMHO only for want of better design and probably little/no more development effort. And given I feel this has been a trend for four or so years now, I'm concerned for the outcome of the huge development now underway. eg: Consider if numerous core areas of its mechanics are as needlessly unbalanced/pointless as sub-surface deposits. Or worse still, if entire aspects of it are as ill-considered and ill-conceived in viability as Multicrew...

As I've said before, I sincerely hope next year's release is some epic bar raising development... But give the past four+ years history, I'm concerned. I truly hope my concerns prove groundless!