Elite: Dangerous

[Duellist_D]

I would chime in on the fun and laughter, but i'd rather just have a good new Spacegame similiar to X or what Elite PROMISED instead of all this shit.

 

[Mortmal]

Elite is coming to XBone:

Available now on PC and in spring on Mac, Elite: Dangerous is the definitive massively multiplayer space epic, bringing gaming’s original open world adventure into the modern generation with a connected galaxy, evolving narrative and the entirety of the Milky Way re-created at its full galactic proportions.

At GDC Frontier Developments was excited to announce Elite: Dangerous for Xbox One. Elite: Dangerous for Xbox One is planned to launch in 2015. To subscribe to the Xbox One mailing list for further information and rewards, visit www.elitedangerous.com/xboxone

First Wasteland 2, now Eite. What is with Microsoft sucking up PC exclusive titles?

Theres absolutely no reason to buy a xbox one,nothing worth playing on it , nothing you cant get better on pc and they have no ideas nor skill. So they salvage those not so great pc exclusives to keep people busy.
That trailer is again awfully misleading, poor console kiddies who will get this turd as gift on christmas...

 

[Bradylama]

Reminder that it was known before the Beta that controls were being designed for cross functionality. The actual gameplay did not suffer one iota. This is not why the game lacks content. You all knew this was coming months ago, and now you think it's the last nail in the coffin?

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

That trailer is again awfully misleading, poor console kiddies who will get this turd as gift on christmas...

It reminds of the marketing blurbs on the box for Flight Unlimited II. It was a pretty good general aviation sim that involved flying a Cessna Skyhawk around the San Francisco Bay Area while having pretty realistic ATC interactions, yet the marketing blurbs cited "pulse pounding excitement", "tactical interception by fighter jets from Travis AFB", "the terror of flying in a thunderstorm", etc.

 

[Norfleet]

Think of it as an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of the PC Master Race by stomping the console scum.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-03-06-elite-dangerous-xbox-one-console-david-braben

David Braben on how Elite: Dangerous on console will actually work
Always-online Xbox One version integrated into PC's universe.

Elite: Dangerous was finally confirmed for a console appearance during Microsoft's GDC 2015 conference yesterday, with Frontier's space game a timed exclusive on Xbox One - and with a PS4 version expected at some point afterwards. Speaking to Eurogamer in the direct aftermath of the announcement, Frontier boss David Braben outlined what coming to console means for the space exploration game.

Console ports of Elite: Dangerous have been part of Frontier's plan since near the start of Elite: Dangerous' development, Braben said. "We said at the start, it's about ways of playing a game," said Braben.

"I don't want to exclude people doing that, in the same way that head-mounted displays were part of the plan. We didn't expect to do them as soon as we did, in our team as well as the backers, we decided to do that earlier. We've had controller support in from day one, and actually a lot of people play with controller. I probably play it more with a controller than HOTAS."

So why did Frontier decide to make Elite: Dangerous' console debut on Xbox One? "It's always a difficult one," Braben replied.

"Xbox has been very good to Frontier, and we've done a lot of games over the past decade with Microsoft. We did a launch title with Xbox One, Zoo Tycoon, all with the same tech and ScreamRide came out. We've got a lot of people with experience on the tech, so we can get on it straight away, and our tools have been tested, are battle-hardened, on the system. Obviously we've got a great relationship with Microsoft too."

The exclusivity - it's a timed exclusive, although Braben couldn't divulge details of how long the window is - is clearly a big deal to Microsoft, with Xbox boss Phil Spencer placing the announcement at the top of his GDC talk. Spencer's talk went on to focus on Xbox Live and Windows - outlining the integration of gaming across multiple platforms, including Windows PCs and Xbox Ones. Is that going to be a factor in the Xbox One version of Elite Dangerous?

"It's the same galaxy, you'll see the same evolving events happen," Braben explained. "So you might see systems that are being discovered by people on Xbox on the PC and vice versa. We're looking into cross-platform direct play. There are pros and cons to that, and we want to make sure we get it right."

That means that, like its PC forebear, the Xbox One - and subsequent console versions - will always require an internet connection. "The thing with the evolving story, we've got that happening and it'll be the same on Xbox," Braben said. "There's huge value to the online connection because of the way the galaxy evolves, and all the things we're doing in the cloud make it possible to do the game we're doing."

The updates that have been a regular part will also play into the console versions, though they won't necessarily arrive day and date with the lead PC version.

"They won't necessarily stay permanently in sync, but there will be steps coming out. We'll work out the exact detail over time," said Braben. Importantly, Braben suggested the new console versions won't have a negative impact on the PC version. "This is why I'm saying we won't necessarily update them at the same time. That's not an issue. PC development is still going from strength to strength - you've seen the cadence of updates we've had already, we're supporting the game and it's continuing to get better."

So what other considerations have been made for the console version of Elite: Dangerous? The updates that come to the PC in the coming months will be folded into the Xbox One version, and it seems that, for all intents and purposes, the console version will be identical to the PC version.

"Look at the community goals in 1.1, look at the two upcoming updates, they'll all be on Xbox," Braben said. "The game is continuing to get better, and that game is coming to Xbox - and there are more things we plan to do before then. The learning curve is an issue, we're aware of that. But then again, it's a great game that doesn't take you by the hand, and I love that. I felt it was something we'd largely lost in gaming - there's been a lot of dumbing down, even on PC, and it's great to see something I can get my teeth into."

There's the question of virtual reality, too - something that's become part of the PC experience thanks to its full-blooded support of Oculus Rift. Is that something being considered for future console versions - and can it take advantage of Microsoft's own Hololens technology?

"Morpheus looks good, as do a lot of the others," Braben replied. "Valve has the technology with the HTC thing, and there are others people are talking about. We're very well-placed to take advantage of all the VR solutions. From my point of view, it's such a nice experience. I love Elite with Oculus Rift. I suspect I'll love Elite with other head-mounted displays as well. I think the question, as we see more and more details of Hololens, is how well it would work with VR, never mind AR."

As for how Elite Dangerous evolves over the future, it's going to be interesting to see how the console version fits into the ecosystem. As yet it's not confirmed whether Elite: Dangerous will ship in a box and on a disc, or whether it's being rolled out as a digital only release, though Braben's thinking in the long term about how all versions will evolve.

"I would like to see me building on it forever. For a very long time. There is so much more we can do, that I've already talked about - we've talked about landing on planets, walking around inside your spaceship, ship to ship boarding, all of those things. We've also said we'd have free updates, and paid for updates. It's all very exciting!"

 

[praetor]

if they won't be updated at the same time, having them share the same universe is even more idiotic

and is he playing a different version than the rest of the world? because there's no "evolving universe" in this turd

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

It's all very exciting!"

 

[J_C]

It's all very exciting!"

Too bad the game is not that.

 

[buzz]

why did the opinion change so fast in this thread?

I remember all the people from the BETA enjoying the shit out of this game.

 

[Turjan]

why did the opinion change so fast in this thread?

I remember all the people from the BETA enjoying the shit out of this game.

During beta play, you still see things change and your imagination thinks of all the possibilities. Upon release, you know what became - or rather not became - of those things you imagined.

 

[Bradylama]

why did the opinion change so fast in this thread?

I remember all the people from the BETA enjoying the shit out of this game.

Because the game is still in Beta. They even blue balled us on the Emperor dying and there actually being a civil war in Imperial space. This game was released a year too early because they needed the money.

 

[Perkel]

Flying ships is amazing. Best out of all spacesims. Problem is that gameplay itself is shit. Especially if you like something more like X games where you could build your own trading empire, fleets and so on.

 

[Makabb]

I would quote myself from this thread but i'm too lazy.

This game was released a year too early because they needed the money.

This is what happens when there is no publisher to fund and put pressure on a company.

Kickstarter is bullshit.

 

[Ulminati]

Yeh... During beta we were like: "Tge actual flying is good and we hope the other systems will be just as good. If they are, it'll be awesome". Then we got barebone secondary systems and were like: "With a bit more work, this could be good". But a little more work didn't happen and now we have good flying but no reason to fly.

 

[J_C]

Kickstarter is bullshit.

Yeah keep saying that, meanwhile I go play with my KS games which made the incline of RPGs last year.

 

[Ulminati]

Kickstarter is bullshit.

Yeah keep saying that, meanwhile I go play with my KS games which made the incline of RPGs last year.

You mean Broken Age and Spacebase DF9?
You know, the games by your SJW overlord that you rabidly defend.

 

[J_C]

Kickstarter is bullshit.

Yeah keep saying that, meanwhile I go play with my KS games which made the incline of RPGs last year.

You mean Broken Age and Spacebase DF9?
You know, the games by your SJW overlord that you rabidly defend.

which made the incline of RPGs last year

RPGs
You know, Shadowrun, Divinity, Wasteland, Expeditons: C.

 

[J_C]

Introduction video about the wings:

I must say that the concept is pretty well developed. Sure, this should have been in the game from the beginning, but at least they are on the right track. I still hold onto my prediction that the game will be good in a year.

 

[Infinitron]

Interview: David Braben On Fan Anger And Expectations

Elite: Dangerous [official site] is that rare thing: a Kickstarter-funded game that came out when its developers said that it would. Less rare is the response it inspired when it turned out that the planned offline mode had been scrapped, leaving a game that required an internet connection and backers struggling to receive refunds.

Despite this, the game has considerable merits. I spoke to David Braben at GDC 2015 about whether player’s anger is fair, whether the tone of responses has changed over the course of his career, and whether Elite is designed for those who play for five hours or a thousand.


RPS: Whenever we write about Elite on our site, there’s a portion of commenters who are angry about the condition the game was released in, the absence of offline mode, the problems with refunds. Is that anger fair, and does it feel different to when you were making games twenty years ago?

Braben: It’s a difficult one. There are certain people who will never be happy, and there are certain people where– It’s a shame, but I’m always saddened when people are upset about something. For the whole time that I’ve been in the games business, there’s always been things where people have got angry about something. I remember with RollerCoaster Tycoon, [adopts gruff, angry voice], ‘This game doesn’t work on my PC! It’s disgraceful!’ and all this thing. And we’ve engaged with them and it turns out there’s a problem with their driver and then often afterwards they say, ‘Oh that’s great, I can also play these other two games that weren’t working.’ [laughs] If you’d have said that earlier we would have been able to get to the bottom of the problem more quickly.

It’s that sort of thing. You can understand, people get very angry if something isn’t what they expect. For whatever reason. But that’s not necessarily to say that you’ve done– you’ve certainly not set out to annoy that person. We’re trying to make the game as good as we can make it, and to do interactive stories, making it great fun to play with your friends, those kinds of things, and there will always be a portion of people which, [angry voice] ‘Oh I don’t want that, I want this.’ And we’re doing our best to make as many people as we can happy.

RPS: As a developer, do you simply have to make peace with the anger? I know devs who say that they don’t go on their Steam forums anymore because they’re just full of anger and there’s sometimes nothing the developer can do to help.

Braben: I do still look at it, but every time I see something negative I do get slightly saddened. If it’s a reasonable point, we’ll do our best to address it, and hopefully people see that I’ve been taking the problems on squarely and said, this is what we’re doing, this is why whatever it is people are asking for, but you try to do your best, that’s the important thing. And you also have a regard for whether it makes the game better or not.

RPS: It was a remarkable thing when you committed to releasing the game before the end of last year and then actually did it. Was that release date a thing you did because it was important for the Kickstarter project to work, or was it a budget constraint?

Braben: No. The issue with the game is… In my experience, there’s always something more you want to do with the game. If you’re a perfectionist, it’s never perfect. But having said that, we released a game that was a complete game. That’s not to say that there wasn’t things we wanted to do with it, I’m still proud of the game we released. It worked as a holistic whole, and we’ve had a lot of people commenting who’ve played the game for more than a thousand hours. Saying, oh, they feel they’ve seen everything. And they probably have.

But they haven’t actually, they’ve seen everything that’s in at that point. We’re continuing to add more content. People say there isn’t enough variation in the missions. I’m inclined to agree and we’re increasing that variation. There’s some variation coming in the Wings update for example, and coming forward there will be in future ones as well, and the point is that we’re making it as good as we can and we’re making it better. We haven’t let go of it. We’re continuing to do that. As we go forward, we will keep doing that. Eventually we’ll bring in a big upgrade, a paid update, which we said we’d do right at the start, and then there would still be support for the game and free updates as well going forward from that.

RPS: Those larger updates are things like landing on planet surfaces?

Braben: Yeah. We’ve said things like going down to planet surfaces, walking around inside your spaceship, getting out of your ship, all of those things would be part of paid updates. And we would phase it, we wouldn’t necessarily do them as part of one big thing, there would be multiple over time. Cause each of those, if you think of the work to do each one, it’s a major new-game-level of content. And so we’re just trying to take that seriously. We don’t want to do half-baked solutions.

RPS: How do you stop that from splitting the community in a multiplayer game, between those who do buy those updates and those who don’t? To avoid the problem of a new player joining and everyone else is in a galaxy far, far away, tooling around on planet surfaces.

Braben: So we’ve done two updates with new features already and they’re free, which means everyone gets them. So that doesn’t divide the community. When a paid update comes, for example that allows going down to planet surfaces, it would be great if people did that. Because we’ve got to keep funding the development which is what hope people will do, but they don’t have to do that, and you may find a group of friends will eventually do it. In the same way Call of Duty fans will eventually move to the later version of Call of Duty. If you think of Call of Duty doing a paid update as being the next version of the game, you have to buy the whole thing or you can’t play.

RPS: But does the game depend upon a constant influx of new players buying the base game in order to keep those areas populated?

Braben: Don’t forget, we’ve also got the skins and stuff like that. We’ve not done pay-to-win but we have done things that make your ship shinier, and obviously as that becomes richer, as you can walk around inside your ships, things like leather upholstery are also things that we can do. It’s not a pay-to-win thing but actually makes your ship more shiny.

RPS: Are you still playing the game yourself?

Braben: When I can. I’ve been playing on beta, so people won’t see me for a while unless you’re in. But to be honest, this is the trouble, coming to shows like this [GDC 2015], it seriously eats in to the time when I can play the game.

RPS: When you play the game, how do you play it? Are you a pirate, a trader, do you like space truckin’?

Braben: I love the exploration thing. I love heading out into the unknown. I love meeting a player in the middle of nowhere. And it’s a sort of Dr. Livingstone I presume moment, when you’re a long way away. I like that sort of thing.It feels like quite a fresh experience to me. I suppose I haven’t had a time to play the playing-in-system, you know, doing the trading. I did earlier on in the project, and I remember I’ve seen myself die a few times on YouTube – and I didn’t do the YouTubing!

RPS: It’s a demanding game in terms of the time investment required to get anywhere with it. Do you hope to add activities to it that can be accomplished in shorter spells of time, so that people who are time poor like yourself can find quicker satisfaction?

Braben: Yes, that’s something that – and the learning curve side of it – that we can improve. We will look at doing that. You can play the game for a short period of time. People say that about Skyrim, which I thought was a really good game. I played that for a few tens of hours, which was a lot for me, but I felt like there was still so much more to do. And it feels like that; you can go in, you can do a few missions, you won’t necessarily progress all the way up to Elite, but having said that, have you had a good time doing it? That’s the ultimate test.

RPS: I guess it feels to me though, that even if you’re hopping in and doing a few missions, that’s going to take you a few hours to do those missions. There’s not much that you can get done in a lunch break.

Braben: I reckon you can do a mission or two in a lunch break. Depends how long your lunch break is.

RPS: That’s true.

Braben: It’s a balance. And if that’s something that we need to look at, then we can. The beauty is, I don’t want people to feel compelled to have played for a thousand hours in only three months or whatever, which is actually a whopping amount of time that people have dedicated.

RPS: I’m assuming that you’ve got player metrics about what activities people are doing and how much time they’re spending on things. What is the – presumably you don’t want to go into too much detail – but what is the breakdown in terms of percentage of players who play for 50 hours versus 1000 hours versus 5 hours? And do you feel like it’s your job as the creator of the game to get people to keep coming back?

Braben: The goal for me is to make the game enjoyable for everbody. To be honest, most disc-based games’ campaigns are only 5-10 hours anyway, generally. I’m not being negative about them, that’s great, and then there are side quests or whatever on some of them that can go on forever. I think it’s horses for courses. As a player of this sort of game, I couldn’t dedicate a huge amount of time to it, but I would like to. And it’s that feeling, that feeling of enjoyment that you want to dedicate a lot of time to it. So I don’t feel bad if people have only played for five or ten hours. I think that’s actually a long time. As long as that time has been enjoyable, and that’s where I think my job is. To make that time enjoyable.

I’m less worried between hours 1000 and 1005, that they see new stuff, because I think that is quite a tall order. But that’s why we’re doing these updates; so that they will. So that even the people who have played for a thousand hours and now seeing new stuff today because of the Wings update, and as we go forward with future updates, with the community goals, they saw lots of new things, and they have those and now they’ve probably played those for a hundred hours or so. But I’m also conscious of the person whose played for nought to five hours, that they get a good feeling, and I think there’s things we can do to make that better.

So as a game developer, I have never felt a game we’ve shipped is perfect. I’ve always felt, we should do this, we should do that. But the beauty now is, we can be doing that. We can now say, right, we need to concentrate on this, that’s our next target, and that’s what we’re doing. It’s wonderful.

RPS: You were open even before the game came out about what updates you had planned. Have you been surprised after the release of the game on what things people want?

Braben: People have very high expectations and that’s fair. And that’s part down to the fact we raised those expectations. But I think we have been delivering on them. And I am proud actually, even looking at what we said during the Kickstarter, we have done very close to what we said we would do. Overall. In terms of people, I think most people are delighted. They’re afraid of saying, ‘oh yes’, because then we might stop. I think that’s at the back of their mind. But we are continuing and we are hitting those things, and if there is a feature that people really care about, talk about it on the forums – people do – and we do look and we do listen. And we do try to say, if a lot of people saying, well, we’ll change the priority. It’s not that we’re not working on it, it’s just that we believe, just for genuine reasons, are more important because more people will get enjoyment from them.

RPS: Do you feel like there’s more need to raise expectations nowadays than there used to be? It’s obviously always been part of marketing, but in an age of Kickstarter, do you have to do that more?

Braben: I think, if you didn’t have high expectations of what you were doing, why are you doing it? We’re doing it because it’s something that we want to do and we’re excited about doing it. Part of that process inevitably raises expectations.

 

[praetor]

loads of PR bullshit in that interview (or he's delusional), but this was particularly hilarious:

We don’t want to do half-baked solutions.

hahaha.. yeah, right. the whole game, other than the flight model, is at best half-baked

 

[Burning Bridges]

Depressing to look at him. An old, sad man who once made a great game. That was when Ronald Reagan was president.

 

[J_C]

Depressing to look at him. An old, sad man who once made a great game.

Yada yada yada, he is an ordinary man, not sad or old in any way. I think you look more into this than what's actually there.

 

[Morkar Left]

The game isn't bad. If you're looking for a new Elite - the original one - it clearly delivers.

But for my personal taste the flight-assist off flying isn't fun, the normal flying is like sitting in a B-52 and there's no autopilot from flying to point a to b which means I have to constantly look at some console bar till two brackets match each other. This are actually the dealbreakers for me gameplaywise, especially the last one.

Another dealbreaker is the always online component. Despite the obvious restrictions it gives me the feeling that the game will stop being available for me when it isn't profitable anymore. Which makes me not wanting to spend any more money on it.

The focus on console games doesn't make me more confident either but I was already expecting this.

 

[J_C]

So, the Race to Elite is finished. Congrats to the winners.

And guess what, nobody died. How is this possible Mortmal, you said it was inevitable.

Also the contest to reach elite rank as far as possible and earn 10K is one of the most moronic thing i've ever seen in my gaming life. I hope they provision enough cash for the lawsuit that will inevitably occur when some asian kid make an heart attack cause of "playing" too much.