At Frontier Expo 2017 the highly anticipated features called Atmospheric Landings, Space Legs and full-scale Procedural Cities weren't announced for Elite Dangerous: Beyond.
The core-improvements that ED Beyond will bring sound awesome, but there wasn't really anything jaw-dropping. Personally I really like the Squadron (guilds), but we have to wait almost a year (Q4 2018).
Zac Antonaci seems to imply that Frontier hasn't even begun working on space legs "Spacelegs (as the community are dubbing them) is something that David B and the development team are very excited by and it’s certainly high on the list of features they would like to make. However, as we’ve mentioned before, “Spacelegs” is something further down the line." Yet in 2016 Braben said "Yes. We have ongoing work on planets, including atmospheres, planetary life, walking about and lots of other very exciting things for the future."
David Braben's core vision for what Elite really is has always been about you're a person in a real futuristic setting, not just a ship.
An other upcoming space sim (which doesn't need to be named) showed live in-engine demonstrations of all these highly anticipated features. The thing is, we want to experience landing on atmospheric planets, space legs and full-scale procedural cities in Elite Dangerous too! We want to be fully immersed in the Elite universe.
On paper Frontier Developments is a bigger game developer. They recently got a major investment from Tencent, 17.7 million pounds ($23.2 million). However, they spread their resources across multiple franchises: Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution and another unannounced game (maybe Planet Safari).
This begs the question how long does Frontier want the Elite fans to wait for these features?
Can we expect to have either 1. Atmospheric Landings 2. Space Legs 3. Procedural Cities in any form in-game by 2019? I'm afraid that Frontier is putting Elite Dangerous on the back-burner and that it'll be just a dream.
Back in 1993 Frontier: Elite II had seamless atmospheric landings and full-scale procedural cities. So please Frontier: make our dreams come true in Elite Dangerous.
[video=youtube;LqhP_e855C4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqhP_e855C4[/video]
Update: here's a procedural city made with Unreal Engine 4:
[video=youtube;b5AIpncO_9I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5AIpncO_9I[/video]
Added a related comment:
The core-improvements that ED Beyond will bring sound awesome, but there wasn't really anything jaw-dropping. Personally I really like the Squadron (guilds), but we have to wait almost a year (Q4 2018).
Zac Antonaci seems to imply that Frontier hasn't even begun working on space legs "Spacelegs (as the community are dubbing them) is something that David B and the development team are very excited by and it’s certainly high on the list of features they would like to make. However, as we’ve mentioned before, “Spacelegs” is something further down the line." Yet in 2016 Braben said "Yes. We have ongoing work on planets, including atmospheres, planetary life, walking about and lots of other very exciting things for the future."
David Braben's core vision for what Elite really is has always been about you're a person in a real futuristic setting, not just a ship.
An other upcoming space sim (which doesn't need to be named) showed live in-engine demonstrations of all these highly anticipated features. The thing is, we want to experience landing on atmospheric planets, space legs and full-scale procedural cities in Elite Dangerous too! We want to be fully immersed in the Elite universe.
On paper Frontier Developments is a bigger game developer. They recently got a major investment from Tencent, 17.7 million pounds ($23.2 million). However, they spread their resources across multiple franchises: Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution and another unannounced game (maybe Planet Safari).
This begs the question how long does Frontier want the Elite fans to wait for these features?
Can we expect to have either 1. Atmospheric Landings 2. Space Legs 3. Procedural Cities in any form in-game by 2019? I'm afraid that Frontier is putting Elite Dangerous on the back-burner and that it'll be just a dream.
Back in 1993 Frontier: Elite II had seamless atmospheric landings and full-scale procedural cities. So please Frontier: make our dreams come true in Elite Dangerous.
[video=youtube;LqhP_e855C4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqhP_e855C4[/video]
Update: here's a procedural city made with Unreal Engine 4:
[video=youtube;b5AIpncO_9I]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5AIpncO_9I[/video]
Added a related comment:
They don't need to add everything of those other games. If you read my previous comments, I would gladly have a basic version of space legs. Such as just walk around in a few sections of a ship, some tools like a laser gun, maybe exploration equipment.
First person shooter games like Counterstrike are pretty simplistic, yet played by millions of people many years after release. Somehow those games were able to not only sell millions of copies, but also retain an active player base with millions of people worldwide.
Frontier's major challenge is not selling copies of ED, but to retain and bring back most of the players who stopped playing (many stopped after a few hours or days).
I hope ED can survive and realize its full potential amidst the upcoming competition. Make Braben's original vision for Elite come true. We're more than just a ship.
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