Are you you sure you want to make that comparison, given that players have not only made SRVs fly, but put them into orbit under their own power?
Are you you sure you want to make that comparison, given that players have not only made SRVs fly, but put them into orbit under their own power?
They will fail. The mission board is not more interesting than talking to an NPC, even a badly implemented one. The mission board's saving grace is that it's brief. But even static menu-based interactions can be visually interesting, compelling to use, and even contain depth, consequence, interesting narrative content, etc. You don't need fidelity to make something interesting, you need creativity and empathy. But Frontier's menus, UI design, and basic choice/consequence structure is bad and boring, even it its simplest form. So yes THEIR space legs NPC interaction will be an elaborate higher-res and slower version of what already exists, which in its current form is BAD but is at least minimalist and therefore painless.
Does that qualify as interesting to you? As deep?
This is the thing. In NMS feet is the game without It the game is even worse then what it is and essentially has nothing going for it. In ED the SRV is only a very small part of the game. The SRV enhances the gameplay that is already there. I don't want space legs or the SRV to be the game. I would like them to enhance what we already do. Unfortunately there is only so much you can do in a wheeled vehicle. Sure there are a few other parts that could be added, but not that much. If anything legs has much more scope for adding depth then an SRV.
Your argument about different gravity is a good one, and it got me thinking - has even Frontier considered this? In their promo videos, pilots seem to have a very "normal" stride when walking up to their ships in a station, despite the notion that gravity is considerably lower on a station than on earth. Perhaps magnetic boots and augmented suits (with synthetic muscles) will be the handwavium to simplify space legs in the various environments in ED.
Magboots are the norm in Elite novels/lore, and early concept art showed zero-G.
DeletedUser191218
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Ye fair point. I just take the view ED is a space ship game. If it expands beyond that then it's a bonus but i'm not holding out for anything else. It feels to me like if they are going to do it's soon or never. There are competitors moving ever closer to release (and not just THAT space game) that are probably all offering legs and ships. X4 could do damage to the player base. Beyond 3.3 will have to be good.
Edit - this isn't necessarily damning. ED was released in 2014. It wouldn't be completely unreasonable for FDev to accept a good 4 year run as the genre leading game. The baton has to be passed over at some point.
It's already expanded well beyond a spaceship game.
To be honest, I have seen pretty much that exact post since 2014. Space legs and atmos have consistently been mentioned as primary objectives, they have repeatedly stated they have people working on it but it's a long-term project. Based on nothing I'll guess start of atmo in 2019, and depending on how things go, spacelegs in 2021. Not holding my breath; if I am healthy, happy and employed by then I'll see it when it arrives.
No.
To be honest, I have seen pretty much that exact post since 2014. Space legs and atmos have consistently been mentioned as primary objectives, they have repeatedly stated they have people working on it but it's a long-term project. Based on nothing I'll guess start of atmo in 2019, and depending on how things go, spacelegs in 2021. Not holding my breath; if I am healthy, happy and employed by then I'll see it when it arrives.
No.
Yes.
Yes. For my part I would be very happy to move around the ship, and in the ship and in the space stations.
That would be enough for my happiness.
Oh, that is right. I often go weeks playing ED completely forgetting there even are spaceships. Lately I've been enjoying myself walking around, flying my helicopter, taking my submarine around a local water world and... Wait, none of that exists. ED is a spaceship game where 99.999% consists of you flying your spaceship, with the sole exception being the ability to drive around in no less than one vehicle that is not a spaceship. And you call that 'expanded well beyond a spaceship game'. Because there is no less than a whopping one thing you can do that is not in a spaceship.
Weak man.
And you don't think after 30mins of walking down yet another corridor much like the last 5, knowing you now have 30mins of walking back to your ship... that you won't feel like you've then been there and done it?
O
I'll say it again: think SRV. On paper, the SRV diving experience simulates driving in a full range of gravitational conditions, from very low G to very high. In practice? Not so much. Thanks to the always-on, unconfigurable and unchangeable downward pointing wheel thrusters, the SRV handles the same on every planet, with slight variations in how "slippery" the terrain feels and how high you can "jump," but that's it.
In a .1G world, you ought to be able to fly your SRV over the landscape indefinitely without ever needing to touch down. In 8G, it should be darn near impossible to launch your SRV more than a few meters off the ground, and it should immediately come crashing down with huge impressive impact when it lands. But no. That would be gravity differences you can feel and respect. We don't have that. It's insane that in a .1G world your SRV can fall off a cliff and go tumbling down into an uncontrollable unrecoverable freefall which destroys you because your own SRV thrusters are stubbornly launching you DOWNWARDS with their limitless power, while you fight against them with your power-limited upward thrusters.
Its dumb and bad and a waste of talent and opportunity. All worlds feel basically the same, there are no graphical or mechanical changes to back up the concept of gravity, in the SRV or ships. I'm not even sure that there is a genuine variable gravity simulation - maybe Frontier just says that there is, but uses the same flight/driving model everywhere but with tiny tweaks to heat/thruster power. We'll never know, and it'll never matter, because Frontier won't let us PLAY with those physics they've supposedly created.
So yeah specelegs are gonna be the same thing. You're not gonna need special powered exoskeletons to lumber around 8G worlds, you're not going to be bounding gleefully around in moonwalking on .1G worlds; it'll all be pretty much the same everywhere and handwave away with downward thrusters mounted on top of your shoulders and helmet. If it happens at all. EVA will be a tiny version of FA-off flying, with no use of grab handles, pushing off of things, throwing things to move yourself, grapples, or significant recoil from weapons.
Theyre gonna make the ships smaller and the SRV smaller and swap out the models and animations.
Depends as always on what you mean with depth. If ED has spacelegs from zero-G to very-high G, that itself would immediately make it more 'deep' than NMS (which is basically just walking as in CoD and such without any space-stuff of any sorts).
I dont play games for the outcome but to have fun, if one is more fun I'll go with that one.
I'll say it again: think SRV. On paper, the SRV diving experience simulates driving in a full range of gravitational conditions, from very low G to very high. In practice? Not so much. Thanks to the always-on, unconfigurable and unchangeable downward pointing wheel thrusters, the SRV handles the same on every planet, with slight variations in how "slippery" the terrain feels and how high you can "jump," but that's it.
In a .1G world, you ought to be able to fly your SRV over the landscape indefinitely without ever needing to touch down. In 8G, it should be darn near impossible to launch your SRV more than a few meters off the ground, and it should immediately come crashing down with huge impressive impact when it lands. But no. That would be gravity differences you can feel and respect. We don't have that. It's insane that in a .1G world your SRV can fall off a cliff and go tumbling down into an uncontrollable unrecoverable freefall which destroys you because your own SRV thrusters are stubbornly launching you DOWNWARDS with their limitless power, while you fight against them with your power-limited upward thrusters.
Its dumb and bad and a waste of talent and opportunity. All worlds feel basically the same, there are no graphical or mechanical changes to back up the concept of gravity, in the SRV or ships. I'm not even sure that there is a genuine variable gravity simulation - maybe Frontier just says that there is, but uses the same flight/driving model everywhere but with tiny tweaks to heat/thruster power. We'll never know, and it'll never matter, because Frontier won't let us PLAY with those physics they've supposedly created.
So yeah specelegs are gonna be the same thing. You're not gonna need special powered exoskeletons to lumber around 8G worlds, you're not going to be bounding gleefully around in moonwalking on .1G worlds; it'll all be pretty much the same everywhere and handwave away with downward thrusters mounted on top of your shoulders and helmet. If it happens at all. EVA will be a tiny version of FA-off flying, with no use of grab handles, pushing off of things, throwing things to move yourself, grapples, or significant recoil from weapons.
Theyre gonna make the ships smaller and the SRV smaller and swap out the models and animations.
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People think there's "assets" in the station, indeed any meaningful structure to even just walk around? Even doors that open from the bays to the stations? Why would there be any of that there?
Boy, if that is how you feel about the depth of the SRV (and even calling it 'slight variations' when you mean to say "ranging from inability to get off the surface to being able to enter orbit", LOL) I'd hate to see your response to the amazing depth of NMS. You seem to expect the world of ED and become ultra upset when you dont get it, while not being even remotely as demanding with other products. While that is your call to make, I think you'd be happier if you changed that attitude.
It seems like you probably didn't read my post. Which is fine. It was long.
Heres the short version: I don't like they way they did the SRV or the way they've handled gravity variation in the game so far. I think it's a weak presentation on a visual and mechanical level. It's a bad driving experience in a pure game sense, and it's a bad expression of planet exploration in a simulation/sci-fi sense.
If you want to know WHY, you can reread my post.
But what I'm mainly getting at is that I think space legs and atmospheric flight are going to be done about as well, and with about the same type of mindset, as the SRV and non-atmospheric planets have been done. If that sounds good to you, then you're gonna love it. But I was sorely disappointed with the way that Horizons' keystone feature was handled.
And at the same time, its ridiculous the way people slag off on NMS on the basis of weird obscure under-the-hood details which don't impact the play experience, while ignoring the big picture. NMS has atmospheric flight and the ships handle differently on the way in and out of the atmosphere as well as in space vs on the surface, and there are tactile, visual, and audio aspects to that presentation which you can feel. Atmospheric/non-atmospheric flight in NMS are AS DIFFERENT from each other as low/high G driving/flying in Elite.
And my guess? Elite's atmospheric flight is gonna be pretty similar. It'll be a few constraints on your control scheme to make them more sluggish, plus some kind of punishment mechanic which boils down to "try to do anything too fun and you'll overheat"
If that sounds good to you then you're gonna love it.
But seriously most of the people who act all holier-than-thou about NMS's mechanical depth, would just about vomit blood from screeching with joy if the exact atmospheric flight mechanics and ground vehicle handling were suddenly reskinned with Elite Dangerous graphics. Don't pretend like Elite is deep when it ain't. If you like Elite's presentation of gravity then you like shallow fiddly "Arcaaaaaaade" game play. Good for you!
Yep 100% agree that there's not much more to add in terms of *what* you can do in a wheeled vehicle. They got it covered. We don't need more verbs we need more nouns. There are very few things that you can interact with, or that can interact with you, in the SRV. We don't need more ways to interact with the tiny handful of RNG cut-and-paste assets which spawn in a radius around us, but it sure would be great if those assets were better realized and if there was some excitement and consequence to interacting with them. This probably requires revision to other systems which are not directly connected to the SRV, though.
How long you can enjoy combat in ED? Or trading? Or mining?
To explore mechanics there's nothing much time wise to do. What makes them interesting is context. Sometimes context is given within game - background sim, everchanging situation in systems and elsewhere, CGs, player driven changes. But sometimes context is just having immersion within your chosen space. And that includes space legs.
I think people do not realize that not everything can be put into such categories or measurements of usefulness of gameplay. There are other dimensions to open world games, and that mostly relies on immersing your avatar within game world. In SWTOR I can go and run to fetch missions all around Coruscant, but I can also take interesting routes and get some very interesting vistas. They are a bit useless in terms of gameplay, but in terms of immersion that what makes Coruscant actually interesting in that game.
I realize it is somehow hard to measure, and it is same as Squadrons - why bother if you have Discord, why bother having voice chat with radio noise filters, etc. But it adds to immersion and adds another invisible yet felt layer of game for player to explore.
If can walk on ships and you can for example invite your friend - having a party? A meeting? Role playing capabilities? And that's just a start.