I would love to see an Elite Dangerous 2, but I just don't seen that happening. Space games are incredibly difficult to make and seem to always be controversial. With Frontier losing as much money as they have. I think that's the last thing they're thinking about.
Frontier doesn't have to make anything. They just have to improve what they already have, why would they reinvent the will they already have, they are basically the pioneers of space sims. If repetitive games like warframe can revamp and bring life back into their franchise so can ED/Frontier.
@@natking1u1z99 The way Elite Dangerous was designed is a huge part of the problems it faces. You can't just keep building on top of a foundation that was not meant to hold the weight of the new content. I don't think you're comparing apples to apples in games either. Elite is a space sim, which is typically popular amongst a much more mature demographic than warframe. Warframe is flashy and colorful and wild. It has a great in game economy system that is both fair (getting good will from players/providing them value) and prints them money. Arx/expansions in elite are nowhere near that league of profit. On the same comparison, warframe has reinvented it's systems and made those foundational changes many times over it's evolution, where Elite mainly just adds on top without foundational change.
You need visionaries to execute plans like that, depends whether Braben has it in him to drive an effort like from the "chair". The current leadership are biz technicians, not dreamers. When you consider the options out there, and where people put their money, it becomes harder and harder to make a case for Elite. The best options for Frontier is to build a solid community game play which can have a tremendous pull effect in subscriptions, they have ignored that aspect of the franchise for far too long and paid the price. They also failed with keeping the community at arms length with an erratic and inconsistent engagement model. they do well for a small while and then fade in oblivion. There are a lot of good things in Elite, they need tweaking, they absolutely need to significantly enhance the teaming and multi player loops and rebalance the grinds. Integrate better the space ship Elite and the space legs Elite, they feel like two games at this time. Enable landing shuttles on carriers would be a good start. They need to do this within 12-18 months as no one is waiting 6 years, announce it now, (and keep engaging with your, every 2 months is bs) to stop the bleeding. You don't need a 2-3 hours twitch production. Have a 15-20 min video released a couple of times a week and a live one 1/2 hour to an hour depending on available ressources event monthly. But keep the presences. Question is are they still there, or was Frontier abducted by the Thargoids? may they're stuck inside on of those Titans and need rescuing? Maybe we'll find a distress message in some crash site or something? Cheers and happy day ...
Honestly I don't think Braben was a fully invested in Elite Dangerous as he could have been. He seemed a lot more interested in running the company and left the development of the game to people like Michael Brookes... I think that's where many of the games problems stemmed from. It needed someone with a vision to drive it forward.
I really hope the game as I know it stays viable. I'm not even a year in to the game and it's so much more satisfying than AAA titles. It changed my direction in gaming, HOTaS and VR just took me to another level and it's hard to go back to kb + m or gamepad
After playing Starfield, I appreciate how great Elite Dangerous is fundamentally, a lot more now. I missed Elite's better space flight and galaxy simulation. And elite's AMAZING galaxy map! The star map in Starfield is so generic in comparison. And exploration feels way better in Elite.
I think a lot of people are coming back after playing the dumpster fire that is Starfield. They marketed it as a space game, not a glorified fast travel simulator in space theme.
People are not coming back it is unfortunately a steady decline at this point. I also do not think that frontier are the right company to build the next Elite and they should sell the rights. In truth given the level of competition in the market I do not think frontier will survive at all.
Complete apples to oranges. If you were expecting starfield to be like elite or star citizen, that’s entirely your fault and not the game. The game was always presented as Skyrim or fallout in space, not a giant space sim. And it was expected as much, it’s a BGS game. BGS has zero history of giant space sim games.
I feel like the cobra engine is absolutely drowning in technical debt even after the code overhaul with Odyssey, at least I'm coping with saying that's the case from the content updates and such. I would adore a standalone elite game or a final update that allows a standalone simulation without a server connection because I'm scared that one day the servers won't be there and everything will be lost.
Drowned - in the past tense is probably more like it. The skeleton crew assigned to build ED:0 completely pooched the cobra engine. I get the feeling that most of the expertise behind the cobra engine have either left FDev completely if not embedded in other projects at FDev.
@@barking_mad6649 What are you talking about? What aspect would be something that nothing comes close to? I literally don't know a SINGLE mechanic that is unique to Elite. E:D is just the worst of the bunch and most of Elite shills don't even know what a fun game is.
Hi Dave. I was in Copenhagen last week for a software conference. What a lovely city. With regards to ED: I think they would find it hard to raise the cash to start a whole new project.
And how much has SC raised? The right vision, right leadership and right people can do it. And that will never be with FDev. Players need to buy out the Elite IP. That is my dream. And lets face it, a significant number of players are middle aged farts like me, engineers by profession, got either lots of time or lots of money but rarely both, and certainly can contribute a lot to buying Elite from FDev one way or that, especially this year if it is as bad for them as last, FDev will be broke and likely feeling very amenable especially if CMDRs can get a few million together which aught not be hard.
@@WDGreer59 Exactly! I played the original Elite in the 1980's on my Commodore 64. Fast forward 35 or so years and I really liked the new ED. Being retired since 2017 I made the mistake of gaming 10+ hours a day for several years and burned myself out on it. (Several other games besides ED) Went back from my Alienware gaming rig to my 2019 27" iMac which I like better for general use. I last played ED shortly after Odyssey was released. Later a major update to the game wiped out 2 weeks of brain numbing grinding I was doing to take control of a nearby system. My bad for not being aware of that, but nevertheless if was the final straw and I bailed. My squadron was pretty much inactive by that time anyway. I'm subscribed to the Reddit sub-forum for ED and I keep getting tempted to fire up my Alienware rig and get caught up on 2 years of updates. My FC is parked in the Ngombivas system with enough credits to get it from getting repo'd for another 12 years 😋
@@WDGreer59 Well one thing pensioners have is lots of money. You could be the first to pledge £10k for the community takeover of FDev. Heck we might even end up making money, it will need to in the long run to be self-sustaining. I am not the man to organise this BTW, I am just dreaming. It would sure be great if someone took it serious and ran with it though. And I would also pledge something. Looking at all the joysticks, VR headsets, head trackers, and all the other crap I bought through the years just to play a £5 on sale video game, it does not make sense somehow even that Elite is in this sad, sorry situation. They(FDev) dont play the game and they dont have a clue who their customers are.
First honest and accurate analysis of the situation I have seen. Actually analyzing the numbers themselves, not the ridiculous corpo statements Frontier themselves give about the numbers (looking at you Buur). If you make a list of priority genres for your company and space sim is on the 5th position (lower than RTS even though their RTS game just came out...), you know that they do not focus on Elite anymore, and it's understandable. People are blinded with copium instead of relying on hopium.
Mostly I only do two activities and these include being a space taxi and transporting goods between stations. I've never seen a Thargoid and I'm not a new player, a story mission in Elite that introduces players to Thargoid combat and optimal ship outfitting would go a long way. I still use Inara to find resources when I'm shipping goods, resources like Inara should be built into the game.
People harp on about ship interiors, but I think the main challenge with that is marrying it up with the highly modular nature of Elite ship design. How do you lay out, for example, an Anaconda interior so that you can have either a Size 2, Size 4, or Size 6 vehicle hangar in the same place so that the vehicle drops down out of the hatch under the front of the ship? Same for fighter bay, fuel scoop, etc., and passenger cabins? Would you be able to visit those in person, and how do you implement the dozens of possible layouts based on different size combinations? Or do you just have one corridor layout with a door or blanking plate for each module and ignore any pretence of a realistic ship layout?
I agree with tyou but you probablly gonna get coments about that 1 video when someone make interiors for Cobra. And those people don't gona understand that 1 set layout is much easier than modular one
That's not the issue. The issue is it would be expensive unnecessary and boring. Everyone in the ED community crying they want ship interiors would rush back if we had them tomorrow, play for half an hour then go away again and complain about something else. Think about it this way, how often people rage because their ship got destroyed during the black screen it takes to get you on the pilot chair. Now imagine you actually had to walk there... When Fallout 4 showed how you had to get inside the power armor everyone loved it, couple weeks after the game came out there was a mod to skip that and get you inside the armor right away, it quickly became one of the most downloaded mods at the time.
I feel the same towards ship interiors as well, I don't see how they can work for the player's own ship. It would be similar to the original GTA games streets. They would be long corridors with doors you can't enter with name plaques on. Where I could see ship interiors working is on NPC ships that have crashed onto the planet's surface. These you could enter and walk around on a rescue or salvage mission.
They're not going to be able to make ship interiors with the Cobra engine, the interior on my soon to be decommissioned carrier gets out of sync constantly, NPC crew members standing halfway inside the floor or to the right or left of their chairs, elevators not lined up straight and you can see outer space through the cracks. There's a lot they could do to the game to make it much better, but like everyone said, they're just not listening to the community.
I think SC set a very very high bar on space games. Now everyone wants seamless transitions, space and fps combat, etc... This is extremely costly and hard to develop and especially hard in a multiplayer setting. If a space game has non of the above people will compare and hate the game, because it has missing features.
I think you nailed it. I was hoping the feature overhaul was related to player minor factions and BGS, allowing us to actually own our faction and own stations/settlements, but don't think they would go that far. As for Elite Dangerous 2 would probably be their best option, making a new game from scratch and this time with all the stuff we wanted and they should have implemented in the first version. And this time there better be Raxxla and The Dark Wheel in game or I'm gonna boycott it. :P
I have console and PC, I honestly prefer it on my console, so I was upset when they abandoned them. Having said that, I love ED, so IF they make a sequel and it is on all platforms, I would 100% buy it. As it sits now, the game just petered out for me, though I often miss it.
@@tslay7928 It was too bad when they cancelled future console dev on ED. But if it wasn't making money and the players weren't there it doesn't make sense. The issue I have is that it didn't seem to help the PC. It just stopped them from spending resources without return in that one segment. I think those resources didn't get allocated to ED it was just saved, or put into other projects.
@@jellowiggler I 100% agree, and while I am not educated enough on the economics of a gaming company, I feel like you would get more revenue from offering it on multiple platforms like ED was before Odyssey. I spent my fair share on ARX lol. I do understand that when PS5 and the new Xbox came out, it probably too resource intensive to develop on those platforms, but I was satisfied with how it looked playing on my PS5 and was genuinely excited to get Odyssey (until I saw the game play haha). @ag_064 it is honestly seeing it on my 75" OLED. Even on the PS5 the game looked amazing, I would actually prefer to have a HOSAS setup, but it comes down to being lazy and liking looking at the big screen on my couch with the sound coming from my sound system.
I've not played for months now, my interest has been waning since the release of odyssey.. I would definitely return for Elite Dangerous 2 but I'm getting on now and would like it to arrive sooner than 5 years from now..
I'd prefer an overhaul of the current game over a completely new game. Resetting the galaxy - if there even is a whole galaxy - would be pretty annoying. And I wouldn't like to lose the progress I made with my CMDR, as it took me quite some time to get where I am, and there's still so much to do. So building on and expanding the current game would be nice, but a new Elite would sill be better than no Elite. That's what I'm hoping, what I'm fearing is, that they'll drastically cut back on everything, and take another twenty years until they dig out Elite again. Or if they keep on losing value, they'll be bought by a Chinese company and their games will be turned into microtransction hell. But for now, I'm confident that ED will at least still be there when I return from playing BG3, although I might take a look at Phantom Liberty first. But I intend on starting an exploration trip before the end of the year, I've been wanting to do that for years. Although I'd also like to take a look at Starfield, at the leisurely speed I like to play, I wouldn't finish that before the heat-death of the universe.
Or they could do a accountr transfer -- for players having ED and ED2 simultaneously, at least some kind of transfer would be nice. I guess ships, credits and that would be the easiest. OR they will reset the Galaxy by story, e.g. Thgds would do some "doomsday machine" and next elite would be something like "after the fallout" (wihtout the word fallout ofc) 🙂
The only Elite game I've played is ED. But the best part of ED is the flying, and that was I think there from the beginning. All the other stuff is extra, and it seems the extra has slowed a lot. IDK how they could get the horsepower to create so much new content to start an all new game when their horsepower has had such a downward trajectory. I would def buy it if it comes, and I hope they can copy the flight characteristics at least.
It's likely that I'd buy ED2 so long as there are improvements over ED as a thanks to the amount of hours I put in, and fun I got out of the current one. But that would mean everything included in ED base game & Odyssey is present, only better than it is now. It can't just be a graphical improvement over ED while lacking the features of both Horizon and Odyssey.
I came to Elite fairly late (2018). I got in on mining when it was big while looking forward to fleet carriers and had such high hopes for Odyssey. Its sad the way people look at the game since it really is amazing regardless of its issues. I hope the community doesn't die.
I believe Frontier spent too much money on the Thargoids. This is Elite : The Thargoid years. This disenfranchised the original groups who fought the thargoids. They neeed to make a usabale SRV, something like the car you drive to work. So long of time without new ships for humans. After one year with the thargoid war there is no real end in sight. I would like to see the return to a more normal game play. Not being herded into what FDEV wants....
I'm constantly running into new players and its not game mechanics or features that turn people away. It's the grind and not having good direction. I love the sandbox aspect and personally that's why I play it. But, for new players they really need something more than just tutorials. Maybe like a co-pilot role that they team up with the AI to perform tasks. Such as cargo missions, mining, ground combat or exploration etc.. Something more to help skim through the very wide surface the game offers and get more involvement because I find myself holding hands and basically feels like I'm training someone on the job. I get it, that's the game and all and most veteran players didn't get there by someone else carrying them through the game. But, the game has a very hard learning curve that doesn't pull new players in very well. Like a hard shell that once you break in then the game becomes more enjoyable and able to part take in community goals, thargoids etc. But, a new player is just not really sure what to do and this sandbox experience does turn away at least 50% of the new players within the first hours, if not minutes of trying it. Just my $.02
The Grind and The Part where this is a Multiplayer Game But you are Mostly Stuck alone.. There Needs to be a whole new game around TeamPlay Star Citizen is Expensive with Real money but this is probably the Best we get
My main gripe with ED was they needed it to be more skill inclusive. Make it challenging, and make you work for your achievements, but don't make the learning curve so steep that it put people off if they struggle.
@@PhilHibbs It could still be and it's an easy as fuck implementation even with what we have now. They don't even have VAs for almos anything. Make it that once you get pass the initial tutorial you get a "main quest" that teaches you the different aspects of the game from selling biowaste to engineering, with rewards along the way to get you prepped. For example the "exploration" main quest, you get a Cobra with a grade 3 drive for the mission. You do the quest succesfully of IDK, "locating and recovering data and materials from a crashsite let's say 300 lightyears outside the bubble", you go pick the stuff you need, go deliver the stuff back where you need to, you get to keep the cobra and the grade 3 fsd, there's another quest to make your fsd better, make every upgrade a quest reward from farseer along materials and money to eventually buy a big fsd and also upgrade it. There that's a framework for helping the players without being too handholdy and teaching the mechanics. Once you finish each quest you are learning different aspects of the game and get ready for your "mid game" which would be your standard elite gameplay loop-
It's a space sim It's going to have a learning curve but it wasn't hard to figure out, I started before there was any tutorials only a few posts on RUclips to get the basics then learned as a played. That definitely made me appreciate the game more.
My elite 2 top 5 wants list: 1)All types of Weather on planets. 2) Different Ship HUDs per ship manufacturer 3) better on foot scrap/salvage of crashed ships or abandoned outposts mechanics. 4) ship interiors 5) more personalized missions, and less randomly generated ones. Give me a contact at a station that I can build a business relationship with.
I'd love a sequel and I agree than many players would return to the franchise if there was one. What I liked most about the game was the long-term goals, slowling building wealth and upgrading ships, until you could afford a fleet carrier. Some criticised this as 'grindy', but for me it was one of the most enjoyable things. If they could continue that to the point when you can have fleets of ships and even own space stations, mining bases etc, that would be amazing, even if it would take years of play-time to achieve. I also liked the alien races on the Amiga version of the game. If they could add those almost randomly generated dudes back in that might be fun.
There are a few additional directions to take. 1. Truce with the Thargoids, perhaps even a peace where some tech would be shared and new explorations unlocked. Easy, boring. 2. Thargoid war continues and humanity further intrudes into Thargoid space revealing more exploration and information about the Thargoids and the defeated Guardians. Basically status quo. 3. A new species contact, perhaps the Guardians or their spawn to help with the Thargoid war. Maybe another species yet unknown who may have helped the Thargoids defeat the Guardians. They may align with or against the Thargoids, depending on post ancient war developments and politics. Potential spinoff or side story to pursue.
I would prefer to that they keep building on what they have? Other games out there have performed complete engine overhauls & kept the game running without a break. They certainly need to reduce the appaulling grind wall which has put off so many as well. If something is not enjoyable? Then it should be removed, or changed? I would in many ways hope the major overhaul is not engineering though? All they would have to do is reduce material costs by two thirds to make it less painful? Plus remove re-logging to desktop FFS!
I ordered from you about two years ago two elite mugs. (Remember your limpets one) Second one I gave to my friend who saw newest Elite when I played it that time. I bought Elite LEP when it was available in the past. It's a hard game to play without googling and watching what you need to do especially with the mats and with engineers. Lot of times I have been jumping hundreds of LY's to wrong direction to just realise that I need to meet some other engineer before that. Grr... Elite is a good game where you feel like you are flying a ship in space and that feeling that you can go where you want if you want to do that. Game has stalled to place where it shouldn't be. We waited so long that big Odyssey expansion what wasn't what anyone exptected it to be. I doubt there will be Elite 2 without David Braben's new vision, who originally made it possible, even when it took so many years to come. Thank you for your awesome yt-videos! Greetings from Finland!
Dude I miss early game ED, I had so much fun with this game and tbh there was nothing for me that was not fun (except trading, I never did that). Sadly im afraid that I start to feel the repetivness of the game once youre done with almost everything.
If David Braben personally, on record states that it is possible to understand what Raxxla is using accessible mechanics within the game I would be back. It's been almost a decade and he's never stated anywhere that it's possible. Raxxla exists in the game, he's never stated whether it's possible to even just understand what it is, even the understanding of what it is could be locked away.
Pretty fair assessment. If any future new game (presumably to use an updated engine/architecture as gaming tech advances) could replicate and perhaps improve further those aspects of ED that are ahead of the competition, like the ship-based combat mechanics, that would be great. I imagine the on-foot aspects would be drastically improved following the derision which greeted Odyssey (from dedicated FPS players). If they could introduce more ability for players to change the dynamics within the game (BGS...) that would also go down well. I even think a subscription model could work if subs were small. Anything to improve the likelihood of keeping any new game vibrant, with new content regularly. I am no expert on game developer financials but depending on new players (forever) to maintain a revenue stream seems optimistic to me. Even a modest/tiny continuous income stream would be better, wouldn't it?
Frankly at this point i would be more excited about SpaceBourne 3 (wich is far fetch since Spacebourne 2 is stil in early access) or X5 than a next ED game... i'm damn sure that Egosoft guys are passionate dreamers who know what players want and they also know their own limitations but they also do their BEST to achieve their goal. And DBK is a indie guy that has nothing to lose and all to gain with his Spacebourne franchise, all he needs to do now is just polish his game until everything works perfectly and the game is bug free..
Whatever they decide to do with Elite, the grind must go. It's the reason I've stopped playing. I get an urge to play because I love the world (galaxy?), but then I remember the grind, and then I don't. That's the thing that's killing the game for most people, and they just keep leaning into grind game play.
I could only say that the release of Starfield (a game that personally is not the masterpiece that everyone announced), and the current embarrassing situation in which Star Citizen finds itself, do nothing but confirm how Elite is the only space-themed game worthy of being called such. It's absurd that it is in a state of abandonment, not now, where the sci-fi themed video game market is having enormous public interest.
The problem with ED 2 is that usually the next game in an iteration has a marked improvement graphics, functionality, and new and improved features. Elite already requires fairly high end computers to handle the Odyssey content; especially if you want the graphics turned up. It already has a massive procedurally generated galaxy. I could see maybe wanting to retool and rerun Stellar Forge with all the new data we've acquired in the past decade but for all practical purposes it's unnecessary. They could just flesh out the stuff they added to NSPs and maybe add some more. As far as improved features. ED already has the framework to add whatever... in fact we still have features that need to be fleshed out. Like all of them. You name an aspect of the game and Frontier has left it largely unfinished: multi-player/multi-crew, the economy, power play, modules, NSPs... there's so much that just needs to be finished. When it's all said and done I think it would be far more costly and risky to rebuild the game from the ground up than to just start making smart decisions with the current game. Really... what I want is a solid exploration update. Give us something to do with the NSPs. What are Void Hearts? What are the anomalies? Let us scan them so we can figure out if they're related or where they may have come from. Are they related to the Thargoids? Where's the Construct? What are brain trees? What are space pumpkins? What's in the permit locked sectors? There's all this great content... that goes nowhere.
I'd put money on it that they've been taking tech demo pitches on Elite 5 for at least the past few years. Which could mean that it may be on the way here really soon.
I think that if Elite 2 is hoped for and starting planning or concept designs, I would expect 2 or more years of restructure. There will also be other more immediate games they can prioritize to improve cashflow. I think they would develop another healthy game before Elite 2 due to Elite having a bit of a niche market. Between No Mans Sky, Starfield and a couple of others, Elite 2 would also have to take lessons from these games, and therefore you would have to see how Starfield develop (if they even want to spend a little time on it). I don't personally see Elite 2 before 2030. At least if they have to develop new software for stars or starsystems. Shorter timeline if they just reuse what they have but limited by where they think they can obtain the most amount of money.
ED2 would certainly allow them to work out some of the things we wanted to see without having to undo all the programming spaghetti. They've plenty of reusable assets too so it could probably be developed relativly quickly / cheaply.
Let me have a proper offline single player game. Allow mods. I can tweak the game to be my perfect vision of what Elite should be rather than anyone else's. If need be, I'd pay again to have it.
I think the ‘major feature overhaul’ will be the rework of the exobiology mini game and then that will be it for ED new development. I don’t think it will be anything more grand than that. There just isn’t time, money, or players enough to redo engineering, power play, bgs, or add fps based play.
I'd much rather see Elite 5 than another expansion at this point. The technical debt is huge and there were some design mistakes along the way that would be hard to revert now Neither of them seem likely at this point, though. Sure I have my first discovery name on many stars and our PMF is doing great in BGS, but I wouldn't mind a reset.
Anyone who still praises Frontier is the very reason why ED died. Instead of drawing lines in the sand years and years ago everyone gobbled up frontiers BS of them updating the game with "Core game mechanics" which was a fancy way of saying...here are more ship skins and a different button for mining. Like ALL game communities until gamers educate themselves what "End Game Content" actually is, ALL games will suffer a short lifespan and be very boring. Archeage and EVE online are the only 2 games that perfected "End Game Content" but sadly both were killed off by greedy devs. But the fact remains, END GAME is Super rare in a game, and even more rare done well. ED could have had ENDLESS end game but everyone thinks Frontier has 300 devs working on ED when in fact it was just 5. Then youtubers sold ED for a decade never calling them out but instead just "Selling" the game and getting that nice paycheck from Google for making videos about it.
They don't need 5/10 years for a new game. They have almost 10 years of feedback of ED. They can make a new game pretty fast (kind of) but it needs to be with a modern game engine! This isn't a game for kids in their teens! This is a game for older (30+) gamers and if they include ship interiors (it's what players want), a little better FPS (more realistic weapons and armor) and same flight model! I played ED for almost 4 years straight, didn't play anything else (even bought a second account) but the Odyssey debacle ended the game for me. I was very disappointed with the FPS part! If they make ED2 I'm almost sure I would buy it!
What?. You mean a hand held gun shouldn’t take down the shields and destroy a space ship faster than the weapons of another space ship? Who’da thunk it?
I always returned back to frontiers elite, had it on my C64 first and went ballistic 2014 to have this elite 4 on a PC with contemporary graphics and sound. If they decide to make an elite 5 I'm in as I always have.
Since the Thargoid story updates are not that engineering heavy, but require more artist and story engineer activity, it might be that behind the scenes they are working on a larger update. I think they also learned from the previous large patch releases that they shouldn't hype up any new updates before they are ready with it. Now this might be wishful thinking on my part, but I could see something like this being the case.
I think this is a good video. I agree, it makes no business sense to push on with ED and maintenance mode is what I expect to come. I will bow out about talk of ED or whatever they plan as I just don’t know. Sadly I do wonder if they have burnt too many bridges with the last couple of years (maybe longer)? I would love an ED 2, but only if they do much, much better than what they delivered with Odyssey!
walking around ships, sneaking on other peoples ships, and stealing them, safari's, multi crew, hang on... people are doing that in SC! is there a lesson to be learned?
After 10 years, i still love and play this game. Only expectation from Frontier is if they stop the EDO, then they can offline servers and let us to play offline mode whichever we want to change about game. They can move along to other games with it. Farewell Frontier, welcome EDO offline mode.
I think if Frontier waited a few years and then started to develop another elite it could be huge. Using everything they know and learned from developing E:D could be used to learn from those mistakes as well as having access to new technology to help the game run better like Unreal 5 for example. If they remade Elite:Dangerous but better it could be massive; they really need to retool and expand ideas like CQC for more casual action oriented players to keep more players involved. They also need to do atmospheric planets including weather systems its a massive undertaking but to be realistic it has to happen! We need to be able to fly on water worlds while water skiing behind an Anaconda! If they made every little part better like lighting from different stars etc. it could be what Starfield wished it could have been.
Can you make a deep dive hour+ video on what happened to elite and why it wound down into nothing. For example there being nothing in the shop worth buying and the how content gets drip fed to players. Basically a look at the life of the game from launch to now. Plus maybe getting comments from other elite RUclipsrs like how yamiks did with his ship reviews. I love the game but I know it's just about over especially for me on Xbox. In my opinion elite was a live service that it didn't want to be and a mmo that it didn't care to be.
Also in the video highlight some of the fun memories, like how towards the beginning a enemy ship near death would just stop and start rolling. Also have a bunch of rolling playlist of pictures going to show pictures of people playing with their friends. I never really associate with the "community's" of other games or fan bases because their always full of pathetic nerds but elite was a game that I would happily call myself part of the community. I miss flying my full beam Lazer Corvette with my buddy who flew a full armor piercing multi cannon anaconda. Maybe if frontier leaned harder into being a mmo combat would mostly be the same as it was at launch.
I hope so... it definitely could use an upgrade, But hopefully... they'll still stick to the identity of a "spacesim" and not giving up to the simplification trend nowadays and ends up with a mariokart version of a space game.... complete with magical ships summoning pocket and ship negating everywhere portal.
No man sky is what got me aware of the space sim genera but Elite Dangerous is what made me fall in love with it. I really hope they do a big overhaul to the on foot and planetary exploration part of it. Altough the space exloration part is the best in the genera, the on foot and planetary exploration feel really barebones and boring for about 90 percent of the planets you are allowed to land on and explore.
The problem is Frontier has released failure after failure over the last few years, excluding Elite. Their best hope is to sell themselves to someone with deep pockets. Odyssey gutted the player base. Console is stuck where it is forever. They don't have the money, the talent or the time to make an Elite 2. That would take real capital investment with money they do not have.
Sadly the whole world has seen a drop in market value the last few years. We need to elect better leaders. I love Elite and I hope that Frontier makes it through this.
I really hope a sequel is on the way. Personally, I am a console (PS4) player, so my space-sim options are very slim, and I see nothing changing that for some time.
I put over 1200 hours into the game on Xbox when it launched along side The Long Dark as the first two games of the Xbox Preview Program way back in 2015/16 I wanna say. We even got an exclusive decal for our ships for playing the game that early on. I don’t have my hopes of FD continuing console support with the elite franchise after how they treated us when odyssey came out
Well. The problem with space games is the engine. What we see with Starfield is the result of throwing a ground based engine on a space setting. And the engine of ED is fundamentally broken and outdated. Dropping of Consoles MacOS and never supported more than 32-button controllers only to mention the top of the iceberg that is whats going wrong. To bring up a proper next-gen-ED it would need hundreds of millions of dollars and minimum ten years of development. Nothing we will see in the near future. Unfortunately. And with so much going on in PC Gaming industry… ARM Processors are unstoppable coming down the way. MacOS is on the rising as far as gaming is concerned and last but not least Linux and Handhelds will only grow from this point. Over all i think Frontier is done. Well with only 10% what they were 2 years ago they are done already. Do not know much companies that were able to recover from such a loss.
For a company that relies on customer activity to generate revenue, it is essential to maintain communication with the player base. The closed-mouth approach that FD has been taking is not a sustainable strategy. In order to keep players engaged and active, companies need to be transparent and communicative. This means providing regular updates on the game, new features, and upcoming events. It also means being responsive to player feedback and concern
I'd say it's time to sell concepts of ships that'll come out soon (tm) and to announce a singleplayer FPS version promoted with a teaser showing some Hollywood stars in space. Trick works to make lots of money, I heard.
If it was up to me, I'd make a few changes....but the biggest would be to call Elite: Dangerous 2 "Elite Dangerous: Colonia". Set the game 100 years in the future, but the Thargoids have spread out across the galaxy to the point that travel to/from the bubble is *possible*, but it's a REALLY long trip and very dangerous, ie not worth the risk. I would fracture the Colonia area into a number of factions, including a couple of Imperial, Fed, and Alliance off-shoots, similar to what we have now. I would rework reputation as well, so if the faction you pledged to is hostile to another faction, and you are in their territory, there's a good chance you'll be engaged & destroyed. I would include a mechanic that would allow someone to remain 'neutral' and gain repuation for each faction, but the more reputation you gained with one, the less you would have with their enemies. On the ships side, this would allow players to get entirely new ships, each with a different look (different cockpits?) and they could "import" one ship from ED: Odyssey to start with.... On the finance side, I would actually run with 3 games, Space travel (ie, vanilla), Vehicles (Horizons), and Ground (Odyssey), with a variety of options, vehicles & weapons that are unique to each game. Each game would be less expensive, no more than $20, but there would be a subscription plan to support the servers, say $5 to $10/mo that would provide additional benefits, especially in ARX, reputation, & credits and BGS. Subscribers though would *not* get additional engineering resources though, simply to keep it from becoming a Pay To Win model.
HI! I recently started playing Elite: Dangerous. The video game is great, unique, immense, I think on Steam it doesn't enjoy the visibility it deserves: the largest and most authentic space simulator is also the most difficult to find searching for video games by categories and tags. That said, I think Elite is very very big to have a successor in the sense of a sequel, and I don't know how possible it is to make a better video game than Elite: Dangerous that should also be, I imagine, different from Elite: Dangerous, although Frontier could do that, given what it did: it could set an Elite 2 a few centuries later, for example. Certainly those who have been playing for years would always like something new, while those like me who have just started only need a lot of time to complete, finish and get to know the game in every facet. Cheers, CMDR!
Elite has been my computer driving force since 1983(I think). It has driven the improvements in my machine and hardware. It still seem the very best space game out there, I have wasted money on Starfield and a couple of others. I would gladly fork out for Elite 2. On the basis it works straight out of the box.
Honestly, as much as I'd love an ED2, I think they would've had to have started development a few years ago to even have a chance. At this rate, I don't actually see FDev continuing to make games/exist much by 2028.
The problem was the thargoid war. They just invested so much time and effort in it but resulted in a boring questlike thing to do. They should have made more ships, develope more on foot scenarios like stealing ships, destroy enemy settlements, salvage materials with the laser and sell them like iron plates, glass, aluminium debris something like that.
I love elite right up to this thargiod war but i have not played for a long time as i not a good bug hunter so when the war is over then i can come back and carry on playing
They stopped updating us console players!!! Once I reached and got my hands on the Federal Corvette. I stopped playing it. I mean for me to get to 5 billion so I can get a ship carrier will take me another 3-4 years of gameplay. I’m a billionaire on it now … just one billion plus.
The financial problem has got be stuff like F1 manager, huge licensing cost and constant updates/rereleases, but will appeal to the accountants more because of sunk cost and a seemingly renewable income source.
Completely agree. We have seen this since the release of Odyssey. Using less resources by re-using existing assets to "carry" the game along with small incremental updates. I don't blame them either. Elite is a 10 year old game and they put all their eggs in the basket of Odyssey and it ended up being a bit of a poor decision. Highly unlikely we will see any major updates in the game's life.
Honestly the problem with frontier seems to be that they find it difficult to run a program of developmemt consistently over a long time. I suspect Frontier may get taken over. Given the relatively low amount of work that Frontier have done on elite I'm not sure they'll be developing another game anytime soon - there was a huge gap between first encounters ans elite dangerous. It really doesnt take much to keep ED going in it's current form with a CG every couple of weeks. But it's a shame we will never get atmospheric planets etc.
I would personally LOVE for somebody to buy the rights to Elite and created a new Elite (never mind the ‘Elite Dangerous’ brand, just a new Elite), which essentially learns lessons from the strengths and weaknessses of both ED and the likes of Starfield, Mass Effect and Star Citizen, and via an appropriate engine and good design creates a new game. I’ll dream of that, but I doubt Frontier in particular are remotely capable of delivering on such a game.
Frontier needs to add wayyyyyyyy more ship customization options. They need to show some love to every single ship not just the crowd favourites. The dang space-legs update. Everyone's been wanting that since day one. The more ship customization we get the more people would spend the money to buy the stuff. The extraction and hazard kits? Best ship kits in the whole game. They could even spruce up weapon and engine detailing by adding different particle effects. They got a lot to clean up to, but also, they need far more content for every role, a lot of roles are becoming stupendously stale. My biggest gripe though is the bubble. We're tired of the bubble and want to expand it, simple as
I appreciate the optimism, but I cannot allow myself to be so hopeful for Elite's future, at least not anymore. Hopefully they surprise me but I highly doubt they will. It seems we're nearing the end of an era for Elite, but perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic. I'm not sure, there's just no telling what will happen next.
Elite Dangerous 2 would be very welcome. I would suggest they focus on the following: (1) Updated Game Engine for current and next gen only (keep E:D online for those with old hw) - - - A chance to address all the lingering limitations of a 12+ year old engine - - - Add damage models to all ships and vehicles (2) Focus on Gameplay - don't spend years creating a few ships, focus on fun gameplay NOT grind-play (reuse existing good assets with some upgrades) - - - There needs to be more story to your path of becoming Elite. Engineers give us a glimpse of what this could be like - - - Odyssey looks great, but gameplay is extremely sparse, especially if you don't like grinding the same exact kill missions over and over (3) Catch up with the other games on the market - - - New Engine should also support planetary base building - Fleet carriers show how this could work - - - Add customizable interiors to all ships - we have customizable exteriors already, and walking around ships should be no big deal. - - - New Planets with lots of life and breathable atmosphere
I said good bye after a particularly disingenuous dev rubbished their promise to let us get out of our chairs in our space ships, acting as if it was about how boring it would get running up and down the stairs. Most of what Frontier produces is SHOVELWARE: Low effort low cost crap made for as little cash as possible. Elite was an exception. It was still crappy in many ways, but the set up of space and space flight was done in a brilliant way. Kudos for that. Where it fell down was content... It barely was "ok" and the horrible planetary villages with stick figures were just embarrassing in multiple ways.
Honestly, at this point...I'd love to see an Elite Dangerous 2 but with Star Citizen/Starfield mixed in...I want there to be opportunities to be an actual insert into the world by doing jobs whether it's planetside and just running a cafe to being a gun smuggler or being a courier and delivering items...to full on ship delivery and mining and exploring...to being a bounty hunter or signing up with the Imperial/Federation and commanding a fleet carrier or doing missions to get ranked up and have accolades showing your progress through actual safehouses you choose to purchase and decorate And obviously, more ships and ways to get around planetside like a speeder bike for the more "urban cityscapes" I don't care how big the game is, I just want a game like that...I don't know...I feel like 3 games are 3 pieces to a bigger puzzle that need to be put together
You are correct, from a numbers perspective they should not focus on elite. A large part of audiences of channels like this one fails to understand that games of this type are not money printers. They have a higher than normal entry cost - in terms of hardware being it the actual computer system, Vr, hotas, joystick and so on. They also need to have a harder than normal learning curve , or else there is no reason to use controllers such as hotas , they require a slower type of gameplay , that alienates much of the "here and now" crowd that represent present some half the gaming community. I work in the game industry for 15 years, in studios that are 50 or even 100 times bigger than FDev, for years some of us have tried to set the bases for a space game, only to be turned down as a venture objectively more challenging and less profitable than other titles. You are also too optimistic in regards timeframes. Unless they have some background done or plan to put some serious efforts in the near future, a serious game would only come out by 2030.
Yep it's so much easier to call for a sequel to Elite from a gaming chair than it is to plan it, fund it and code it. Same with 'why don't they just add ...' type of complaints.
With advances in AI and procedural generation surely some of the technical limitations of ED could be overcome. I love the bones of this game, create flight model and huge scale but it didn’t always reward the effort and hours of grind with unique experiences it always felt like more of the same.
I would come back if there was an Elite 5. As much as I have zero respect for FDev, I loved ED and ED(H). I just think they screwed the pooch with ED(O), ergo I left. The non-gaming front runners telling us "we wouldn't want ship interiors cause it would take to long to run the length of the Conda to get to our cockpits and would get bored of it" kinda ruined it for me as well. Sure they play, but are they really in the know as much as say, Hawkes, The Pilot, D2EA, Obsidian Ant, Yamiks, Burr and the highly missed Exigeous? If they hired them to be front runners, listened to the players, brought back the girl that pioneered the planet tech and of course, brought in ship interiors, I would come back.
I am not surprised the revenue has been going down; for a game with a 10-year plan their monetization model makes very little sense. After the initial launch you can only expect to sell so many full games as time goes on. And with the exception of Odyssey I dont believe there has been any other 'DLC'. Then the only other 'constant' source of income are some ship kits and skins. I have plenty in-game credits but nothing worth spending them on. There are plenty of monetization models out there that they could learn from to inject new life, and money, into this game.
Part of Frontier's problem was focusing on the Thargoid grind that majority of players don't care to do. We've been asking for new ships. Instead we got suit skin microtransactions and an arguably very ugly construction ship skin.
The problem with elite dangerous is it cant decide what it wants to be a normal space sim or an MMO and ultimately inherits the worst of both. The sequel needs to pick one or the other if elite dangerous when fully into the MMO side of things with expanded player factions where the players actually run their factions it could be amazing. more realistically given frontiers financial situation I an imagine ED2 being a scaled down single player game with only the core star systems allowing FD to be free of the financial burden of running the servers. Something more inline with Ever space 2 where they could sell DLC without worrying about the recuring costs of an online game. I don't think most people appreciate just how expensive hosting and maintaining online games are.
It's a good time to mention Sally. She's leaving frontier, and why? We'll never know, but your video is a sign of what's going on in the present. Also when they decided to break with xbox and playstation and not give them any more support. O7
I dunno, I'm not a fan of the idea of them making a new game. It would only serve to fracture the already shrinking player base I think. And one of the benefits of a "live service" type game like ED is that it can evolve over time and grow, rather than having to pump out a completely new game every two years. Now if they stuck with ED but did a complete rebuild of the game engine (maybe convert over to UE5) and rebulld of the game mechanics, that could work out really well; it would be the same level of effort as build a new game, but at least it wouldn't split the player base in two (and give them two games to have to maintain and manage). I guess we'll see.
If the demand isn't served, I still think the tech-dev-astro-science-phile community may bring up a community developed alternative. AAA-RTS games suck for long, and right now there are 2 free to play projects that already smash payed competitors (e.g. Beyond all Reason). That might techwise be a unfair comparison but it can be done pretty sure
They needed planets with be biomes and player settlements. Give the players the tools to generate content. A game with elite flight mechanics and aesthetic, with a no man's sky procedural backend would be my ideal game.
My main problem with ED is, that it is an online game. I am completely dependent on an infrastructure that in not under my control and can go away any time. Speaking of time, the insane amount of time required is my second big issue.
I would love to see an Elite Dangerous 2, but I just don't seen that happening. Space games are incredibly difficult to make and seem to always be controversial. With Frontier losing as much money as they have. I think that's the last thing they're thinking about.
indeed, they are more worried of literally surviving next year than investing 150M (or more) on doing a new space game.
Frontier doesn't have to make anything. They just have to improve what they already have, why would they reinvent the will they already have, they are basically the pioneers of space sims. If repetitive games like warframe can revamp and bring life back into their franchise so can ED/Frontier.
@@natking1u1z99 because they are loosing money, maybe
@@natking1u1z99 Cobra engine is why they have to make something.
@@natking1u1z99 The way Elite Dangerous was designed is a huge part of the problems it faces. You can't just keep building on top of a foundation that was not meant to hold the weight of the new content. I don't think you're comparing apples to apples in games either. Elite is a space sim, which is typically popular amongst a much more mature demographic than warframe. Warframe is flashy and colorful and wild. It has a great in game economy system that is both fair (getting good will from players/providing them value) and prints them money. Arx/expansions in elite are nowhere near that league of profit. On the same comparison, warframe has reinvented it's systems and made those foundational changes many times over it's evolution, where Elite mainly just adds on top without foundational change.
You need visionaries to execute plans like that, depends whether Braben has it in him to drive an effort like from the "chair". The current leadership are biz technicians, not dreamers.
When you consider the options out there, and where people put their money, it becomes harder and harder to make a case for Elite.
The best options for Frontier is to build a solid community game play which can have a tremendous pull effect in subscriptions, they have ignored that aspect of the franchise for far too long and paid the price.
They also failed with keeping the community at arms length with an erratic and inconsistent engagement model. they do well for a small while and then fade in oblivion.
There are a lot of good things in Elite, they need tweaking, they absolutely need to significantly enhance the teaming and multi player loops and rebalance the grinds. Integrate better the space ship Elite and the space legs Elite, they feel like two games at this time. Enable landing shuttles on carriers would be a good start.
They need to do this within 12-18 months as no one is waiting 6 years, announce it now, (and keep engaging with your, every 2 months is bs) to stop the bleeding. You don't need a 2-3 hours twitch production. Have a 15-20 min video released a couple of times a week and a live one 1/2 hour to an hour depending on available ressources event monthly. But keep the presences.
Question is are they still there, or was Frontier abducted by the Thargoids? may they're stuck inside on of those Titans and need rescuing? Maybe we'll find a distress message in some crash site or something?
Cheers and happy day ...
I think this is a very good take in terms of issues and failures within FDev and with the game itself.
Honestly I don't think Braben was a fully invested in Elite Dangerous as he could have been. He seemed a lot more interested in running the company and left the development of the game to people like Michael Brookes... I think that's where many of the games problems stemmed from. It needed someone with a vision to drive it forward.
I really hope the game as I know it stays viable. I'm not even a year in to the game and it's so much more satisfying than AAA titles. It changed my direction in gaming, HOTaS and VR just took me to another level and it's hard to go back to kb + m or gamepad
After playing Starfield, I appreciate how great Elite Dangerous is fundamentally, a lot more now. I missed Elite's better space flight and galaxy simulation. And elite's AMAZING galaxy map! The star map in Starfield is so generic in comparison. And exploration feels way better in Elite.
I think a lot of people are coming back after playing the dumpster fire that is Starfield. They marketed it as a space game, not a glorified fast travel simulator in space theme.
People are not coming back it is unfortunately a steady decline at this point. I also do not think that frontier are the right company to build the next Elite and they should sell the rights. In truth given the level of competition in the market I do not think frontier will survive at all.
Complete apples to oranges. If you were expecting starfield to be like elite or star citizen, that’s entirely your fault and not the game. The game was always presented as Skyrim or fallout in space, not a giant space sim. And it was expected as much, it’s a BGS game. BGS has zero history of giant space sim games.
@@___Nobody__ That's fair.
@@___Nobody__space game = space game.
Fruit
I hope to see Elite grow and improve in whatever form that may take.❤
That takes money. And if you watched the video, FDev has almost none.
I feel like the cobra engine is absolutely drowning in technical debt even after the code overhaul with Odyssey, at least I'm coping with saying that's the case from the content updates and such. I would adore a standalone elite game or a final update that allows a standalone simulation without a server connection because I'm scared that one day the servers won't be there and everything will be lost.
Offline standalone... would be there in a heartbeat. Don't even know if that is possible. Feel like it isn't.
Drowned - in the past tense is probably more like it. The skeleton crew assigned to build ED:0 completely pooched the cobra engine. I get the feeling that most of the expertise behind the cobra engine have either left FDev completely if not embedded in other projects at FDev.
@@alpsalishextremely possible. They won't do it tho
Seems like competent, visionary leadership is the main problem at FDev. In any case, I hope you're right and that there is another version eventually.
I remember a company like that. I think they called it Blackberry.
They made a game that nobody else had made, and still hasn't. It's flawed, but still nothing really comes close to it.
@@barking_mad6649 What are you talking about? What aspect would be something that nothing comes close to?
I literally don't know a SINGLE mechanic that is unique to Elite.
E:D is just the worst of the bunch and most of Elite shills don't even know what a fun game is.
I'd love to see a sequel in 5 or 6 years, but FDEV has to last that long first...
Hi Dave. I was in Copenhagen last week for a software conference. What a lovely city. With regards to ED: I think they would find it hard to raise the cash to start a whole new project.
And how much has SC raised? The right vision, right leadership and right people can do it. And that will never be with FDev. Players need to buy out the Elite IP. That is my dream. And lets face it, a significant number of players are middle aged farts like me, engineers by profession, got either lots of time or lots of money but rarely both, and certainly can contribute a lot to buying Elite from FDev one way or that, especially this year if it is as bad for them as last, FDev will be broke and likely feeling very amenable especially if CMDRs can get a few million together which aught not be hard.
@@gavinburns6994 Middle aged? A great number of us are well past that. The game isn't dying. We are. 😢
@@WDGreer59 Exactly! I played the original Elite in the 1980's on my Commodore 64. Fast forward 35 or so years and I really liked the new ED. Being retired since 2017 I made the mistake of gaming 10+ hours a day for several years and burned myself out on it. (Several other games besides ED) Went back from my Alienware gaming rig to my 2019 27" iMac which I like better for general use. I last played ED shortly after Odyssey was released. Later a major update to the game wiped out 2 weeks of brain numbing grinding I was doing to take control of a nearby system. My bad for not being aware of that, but nevertheless if was the final straw and I bailed. My squadron was pretty much inactive by that time anyway. I'm subscribed to the Reddit sub-forum for ED and I keep getting tempted to fire up my Alienware rig and get caught up on 2 years of updates. My FC is parked in the Ngombivas system with enough credits to get it from getting repo'd for another 12 years 😋
@@gavinburns6994 Indeed. CR there is only one.
@@WDGreer59 Well one thing pensioners have is lots of money. You could be the first to pledge £10k for the community takeover of FDev. Heck we might even end up making money, it will need to in the long run to be self-sustaining. I am not the man to organise this BTW, I am just dreaming. It would sure be great if someone took it serious and ran with it though. And I would also pledge something. Looking at all the joysticks, VR headsets, head trackers, and all the other crap I bought through the years just to play a £5 on sale video game, it does not make sense somehow even that Elite is in this sad, sorry situation. They(FDev) dont play the game and they dont have a clue who their customers are.
First honest and accurate analysis of the situation I have seen. Actually analyzing the numbers themselves, not the ridiculous corpo statements Frontier themselves give about the numbers (looking at you Buur).
If you make a list of priority genres for your company and space sim is on the 5th position (lower than RTS even though their RTS game just came out...), you know that they do not focus on Elite anymore, and it's understandable. People are blinded with copium instead of relying on hopium.
Mostly I only do two activities and these include being a space taxi and transporting goods between stations. I've never seen a Thargoid and I'm not a new player, a story mission in Elite that introduces players to Thargoid combat and optimal ship outfitting would go a long way.
I still use Inara to find resources when I'm shipping goods, resources like Inara should be built into the game.
That and a onboard radio tuned in to radio sidewinder.
People harp on about ship interiors, but I think the main challenge with that is marrying it up with the highly modular nature of Elite ship design. How do you lay out, for example, an Anaconda interior so that you can have either a Size 2, Size 4, or Size 6 vehicle hangar in the same place so that the vehicle drops down out of the hatch under the front of the ship? Same for fighter bay, fuel scoop, etc., and passenger cabins? Would you be able to visit those in person, and how do you implement the dozens of possible layouts based on different size combinations? Or do you just have one corridor layout with a door or blanking plate for each module and ignore any pretence of a realistic ship layout?
I agree with tyou but you probablly gonna get coments about that 1 video when someone make interiors for Cobra. And those people don't gona understand that 1 set layout is much easier than modular one
That's not the issue. The issue is it would be expensive unnecessary and boring.
Everyone in the ED community crying they want ship interiors would rush back if we had them tomorrow, play for half an hour then go away again and complain about something else.
Think about it this way, how often people rage because their ship got destroyed during the black screen it takes to get you on the pilot chair. Now imagine you actually had to walk there...
When Fallout 4 showed how you had to get inside the power armor everyone loved it, couple weeks after the game came out there was a mod to skip that and get you inside the armor right away, it quickly became one of the most downloaded mods at the time.
I feel the same towards ship interiors as well, I don't see how they can work for the player's own ship. It would be similar to the original GTA games streets. They would be long corridors with doors you can't enter with name plaques on. Where I could see ship interiors working is on NPC ships that have crashed onto the planet's surface. These you could enter and walk around on a rescue or salvage mission.
They're not going to be able to make ship interiors with the Cobra engine, the interior on my soon to be decommissioned carrier gets out of sync constantly, NPC crew members standing halfway inside the floor or to the right or left of their chairs, elevators not lined up straight and you can see outer space through the cracks. There's a lot they could do to the game to make it much better, but like everyone said, they're just not listening to the community.
@@DeanCalaway I don't see anyone complaining star citizen have ship interiors...
I think SC set a very very high bar on space games. Now everyone wants seamless transitions, space and fps combat, etc... This is extremely costly and hard to develop and especially hard in a multiplayer setting. If a space game has non of the above people will compare and hate the game, because it has missing features.
IMHO, Odyssey *is* actually Elite:Dangerous 2 (or Elite 5).
Because it is actual game reload.
I think you nailed it. I was hoping the feature overhaul was related to player minor factions and BGS, allowing us to actually own our faction and own stations/settlements, but don't think they would go that far. As for Elite Dangerous 2 would probably be their best option, making a new game from scratch and this time with all the stuff we wanted and they should have implemented in the first version. And this time there better be Raxxla and The Dark Wheel in game or I'm gonna boycott it. :P
I have console and PC, I honestly prefer it on my console, so I was upset when they abandoned them. Having said that, I love ED, so IF they make a sequel and it is on all platforms, I would 100% buy it. As it sits now, the game just petered out for me, though I often miss it.
@@tslay7928why prefer the game on console if you have a pc?
You know you can use controller on PC?
Down to Earth is usually right on the money, I remember him predicting console cancellation one month before it was officially announced.
@@tslay7928 It was too bad when they cancelled future console dev on ED. But if it wasn't making money and the players weren't there it doesn't make sense. The issue I have is that it didn't seem to help the PC. It just stopped them from spending resources without return in that one segment. I think those resources didn't get allocated to ED it was just saved, or put into other projects.
@@jellowiggler I 100% agree, and while I am not educated enough on the economics of a gaming company, I feel like you would get more revenue from offering it on multiple platforms like ED was before Odyssey. I spent my fair share on ARX lol. I do understand that when PS5 and the new Xbox came out, it probably too resource intensive to develop on those platforms, but I was satisfied with how it looked playing on my PS5 and was genuinely excited to get Odyssey (until I saw the game play haha). @ag_064 it is honestly seeing it on my 75" OLED. Even on the PS5 the game looked amazing, I would actually prefer to have a HOSAS setup, but it comes down to being lazy and liking looking at the big screen on my couch with the sound coming from my sound system.
I've not played for months now, my interest has been waning since the release of odyssey.. I would definitely return for Elite Dangerous 2 but I'm getting on now and would like it to arrive sooner than 5 years from now..
I was really hoping for better VR support. ED with handtracking (Quest2) (and hotas) would have been epic.
I'd prefer an overhaul of the current game over a completely new game. Resetting the galaxy - if there even is a whole galaxy - would be pretty annoying. And I wouldn't like to lose the progress I made with my CMDR, as it took me quite some time to get where I am, and there's still so much to do. So building on and expanding the current game would be nice, but a new Elite would sill be better than no Elite. That's what I'm hoping, what I'm fearing is, that they'll drastically cut back on everything, and take another twenty years until they dig out Elite again. Or if they keep on losing value, they'll be bought by a Chinese company and their games will be turned into microtransction hell.
But for now, I'm confident that ED will at least still be there when I return from playing BG3, although I might take a look at Phantom Liberty first. But I intend on starting an exploration trip before the end of the year, I've been wanting to do that for years. Although I'd also like to take a look at Starfield, at the leisurely speed I like to play, I wouldn't finish that before the heat-death of the universe.
Or they could do a accountr transfer -- for players having ED and ED2 simultaneously, at least some kind of transfer would be nice. I guess ships, credits and that would be the easiest.
OR they will reset the Galaxy by story, e.g. Thgds would do some "doomsday machine" and next elite would be something like "after the fallout" (wihtout the word fallout ofc) 🙂
The only Elite game I've played is ED. But the best part of ED is the flying, and that was I think there from the beginning. All the other stuff is extra, and it seems the extra has slowed a lot. IDK how they could get the horsepower to create so much new content to start an all new game when their horsepower has had such a downward trajectory. I would def buy it if it comes, and I hope they can copy the flight characteristics at least.
It's likely that I'd buy ED2 so long as there are improvements over ED as a thanks to the amount of hours I put in, and fun I got out of the current one.
But that would mean everything included in ED base game & Odyssey is present, only better than it is now.
It can't just be a graphical improvement over ED while lacking the features of both Horizon and Odyssey.
And Jesus I hope if ED is a thing, they scale back the grind
I came to Elite fairly late (2018). I got in on mining when it was big while looking forward to fleet carriers and had such high hopes for Odyssey. Its sad the way people look at the game since it really is amazing regardless of its issues. I hope the community doesn't die.
Yep I agree elite is still a great game despite the issues.
I believe Frontier spent too much money on the Thargoids. This is Elite : The Thargoid years. This disenfranchised the original groups who fought the thargoids. They neeed to make a usabale SRV, something like the car you drive to work. So long of time without new ships for humans. After one year with the thargoid war there is no real end in sight. I would like to see the return to a more normal game play. Not being herded into what FDEV wants....
I'm constantly running into new players and its not game mechanics or features that turn people away. It's the grind and not having good direction. I love the sandbox aspect and personally that's why I play it. But, for new players they really need something more than just tutorials. Maybe like a co-pilot role that they team up with the AI to perform tasks. Such as cargo missions, mining, ground combat or exploration etc.. Something more to help skim through the very wide surface the game offers and get more involvement because I find myself holding hands and basically feels like I'm training someone on the job. I get it, that's the game and all and most veteran players didn't get there by someone else carrying them through the game. But, the game has a very hard learning curve that doesn't pull new players in very well. Like a hard shell that once you break in then the game becomes more enjoyable and able to part take in community goals, thargoids etc. But, a new player is just not really sure what to do and this sandbox experience does turn away at least 50% of the new players within the first hours, if not minutes of trying it. Just my $.02
The Grind and The Part where this is a Multiplayer Game But you are Mostly Stuck alone.. There Needs to be a whole new game around TeamPlay Star Citizen is Expensive with Real money but this is probably the Best we get
My main gripe with ED was they needed it to be more skill inclusive. Make it challenging, and make you work for your achievements, but don't make the learning curve so steep that it put people off if they struggle.
Then it wouldn't be Elite in any meaningful way.
@@PhilHibbs It could still be and it's an easy as fuck implementation even with what we have now. They don't even have VAs for almos anything. Make it that once you get pass the initial tutorial you get a "main quest" that teaches you the different aspects of the game from selling biowaste to engineering, with rewards along the way to get you prepped. For example the "exploration" main quest, you get a Cobra with a grade 3 drive for the mission. You do the quest succesfully of IDK, "locating and recovering data and materials from a crashsite let's say 300 lightyears outside the bubble", you go pick the stuff you need, go deliver the stuff back where you need to, you get to keep the cobra and the grade 3 fsd, there's another quest to make your fsd better, make every upgrade a quest reward from farseer along materials and money to eventually buy a big fsd and also upgrade it.
There that's a framework for helping the players without being too handholdy and teaching the mechanics. Once you finish each quest you are learning different aspects of the game and get ready for your "mid game" which would be your standard elite gameplay loop-
It's a space sim It's going to have a learning curve but it wasn't hard to figure out, I started before there was any tutorials only a few posts on RUclips to get the basics then learned as a played. That definitely made me appreciate the game more.
My elite 2 top 5 wants list:
1)All types of Weather on planets.
2) Different Ship HUDs per ship manufacturer
3) better on foot scrap/salvage of crashed ships or abandoned outposts mechanics.
4) ship interiors
5) more personalized missions, and less randomly generated ones. Give me a contact at a station that I can build a business relationship with.
you did not mention full VR support.
I'd love a sequel and I agree than many players would return to the franchise if there was one. What I liked most about the game was the long-term goals, slowling building wealth and upgrading ships, until you could afford a fleet carrier. Some criticised this as 'grindy', but for me it was one of the most enjoyable things. If they could continue that to the point when you can have fleets of ships and even own space stations, mining bases etc, that would be amazing, even if it would take years of play-time to achieve. I also liked the alien races on the Amiga version of the game. If they could add those almost randomly generated dudes back in that might be fun.
There are a few additional directions to take.
1. Truce with the Thargoids, perhaps even a peace where some tech would be shared and new explorations unlocked. Easy, boring.
2. Thargoid war continues and humanity further intrudes into Thargoid space revealing more exploration and information about the Thargoids and the defeated Guardians. Basically status quo.
3. A new species contact, perhaps the Guardians or their spawn to help with the Thargoid war. Maybe another species yet unknown who may have helped the Thargoids defeat the Guardians. They may align with or against the Thargoids, depending on post ancient war developments and politics. Potential spinoff or side story to pursue.
I would prefer to that they keep building on what they have?
Other games out there have performed complete engine overhauls & kept the game running without a break.
They certainly need to reduce the appaulling grind wall which has put off so many as well.
If something is not enjoyable?
Then it should be removed, or changed?
I would in many ways hope the major overhaul is not engineering though?
All they would have to do is reduce material costs by two thirds to make it less painful?
Plus remove re-logging to desktop FFS!
I ordered from you about two years ago two elite mugs. (Remember your limpets one)
Second one I gave to my friend who saw newest Elite when I played it that time.
I bought Elite LEP when it was available in the past.
It's a hard game to play without googling and watching what you need to do especially with the mats and with engineers. Lot of times I have been jumping hundreds of LY's to wrong direction to just realise that I need to meet some other engineer before that. Grr...
Elite is a good game where you feel like you are flying a ship in space and that feeling that you can go where you want if you want to do that.
Game has stalled to place where it shouldn't be. We waited so long that big Odyssey expansion what wasn't what anyone exptected it to be.
I doubt there will be Elite 2 without David Braben's new vision, who originally made it possible, even when it took so many years to come.
Thank you for your awesome yt-videos! Greetings from Finland!
Dude I miss early game ED, I had so much fun with this game and tbh there was nothing for me that was not fun (except trading, I never did that). Sadly im afraid that I start to feel the repetivness of the game once youre done with almost everything.
If David Braben personally, on record states that it is possible to understand what Raxxla is using accessible mechanics within the game I would be back. It's been almost a decade and he's never stated anywhere that it's possible. Raxxla exists in the game, he's never stated whether it's possible to even just understand what it is, even the understanding of what it is could be locked away.
Elite Dangerous sequel will be called Elite Mostly Harmless.
Loved that😂
Pretty fair assessment. If any future new game (presumably to use an updated engine/architecture as gaming tech advances) could replicate and perhaps improve further those aspects of ED that are ahead of the competition, like the ship-based combat mechanics, that would be great. I imagine the on-foot aspects would be drastically improved following the derision which greeted Odyssey (from dedicated FPS players). If they could introduce more ability for players to change the dynamics within the game (BGS...) that would also go down well. I even think a subscription model could work if subs were small. Anything to improve the likelihood of keeping any new game vibrant, with new content regularly. I am no expert on game developer financials but depending on new players (forever) to maintain a revenue stream seems optimistic to me. Even a modest/tiny continuous income stream would be better, wouldn't it?
Frankly at this point i would be more excited about SpaceBourne 3 (wich is far fetch since Spacebourne 2 is stil in early access) or X5 than a next ED game... i'm damn sure that Egosoft guys are passionate dreamers who know what players want and they also know their own limitations but they also do their BEST to achieve their goal.
And DBK is a indie guy that has nothing to lose and all to gain with his Spacebourne franchise, all he needs to do now is just polish his game until everything works perfectly and the game is bug free..
If this happens, and I really hope it happens, I would love it if they let us import our existing CMDRs. I've had the same CMDR since the kickstarter.
Maybe some kind of looks profile but definitely not assets, you'd be back to square 1 like everyone else
Whatever they decide to do with Elite, the grind must go. It's the reason I've stopped playing. I get an urge to play because I love the world (galaxy?), but then I remember the grind, and then I don't. That's the thing that's killing the game for most people, and they just keep leaning into grind game play.
I could only say that the release of Starfield (a game that personally is not the masterpiece that everyone announced), and the current embarrassing situation in which Star Citizen finds itself, do nothing but confirm how Elite is the only space-themed game worthy of being called such. It's absurd that it is in a state of abandonment, not now, where the sci-fi themed video game market is having enormous public interest.
After what they did to the first one I won't be giving any money to Frontier ever again.
The problem with ED 2 is that usually the next game in an iteration has a marked improvement graphics, functionality, and new and improved features.
Elite already requires fairly high end computers to handle the Odyssey content; especially if you want the graphics turned up.
It already has a massive procedurally generated galaxy. I could see maybe wanting to retool and rerun Stellar Forge with all the new data we've acquired in the past decade but for all practical purposes it's unnecessary. They could just flesh out the stuff they added to NSPs and maybe add some more.
As far as improved features. ED already has the framework to add whatever... in fact we still have features that need to be fleshed out. Like all of them. You name an aspect of the game and Frontier has left it largely unfinished: multi-player/multi-crew, the economy, power play, modules, NSPs... there's so much that just needs to be finished.
When it's all said and done I think it would be far more costly and risky to rebuild the game from the ground up than to just start making smart decisions with the current game.
Really... what I want is a solid exploration update. Give us something to do with the NSPs. What are Void Hearts? What are the anomalies? Let us scan them so we can figure out if they're related or where they may have come from. Are they related to the Thargoids? Where's the Construct? What are brain trees? What are space pumpkins? What's in the permit locked sectors?
There's all this great content... that goes nowhere.
3:48 "Whether the mentioned overhaul has been scrapped, or whether they are still working on it... we don't really know"
I think we do...
I'd put money on it that they've been taking tech demo pitches on Elite 5 for at least the past few years. Which could mean that it may be on the way here really soon.
I think that if Elite 2 is hoped for and starting planning or concept designs, I would expect 2 or more years of restructure. There will also be other more immediate games they can prioritize to improve cashflow. I think they would develop another healthy game before Elite 2 due to Elite having a bit of a niche market. Between No Mans Sky, Starfield and a couple of others, Elite 2 would also have to take lessons from these games, and therefore you would have to see how Starfield develop (if they even want to spend a little time on it). I don't personally see Elite 2 before 2030. At least if they have to develop new software for stars or starsystems. Shorter timeline if they just reuse what they have but limited by where they think they can obtain the most amount of money.
ED2 would certainly allow them to work out some of the things we wanted to see without having to undo all the programming spaghetti. They've plenty of reusable assets too so it could probably be developed relativly quickly / cheaply.
Let me have a proper offline single player game. Allow mods.
I can tweak the game to be my perfect vision of what Elite should be rather than anyone else's.
If need be, I'd pay again to have it.
I think the ‘major feature overhaul’ will be the rework of the exobiology mini game and then that will be it for ED new development.
I don’t think it will be anything more grand than that. There just isn’t time, money, or players enough to redo engineering, power play, bgs, or add fps based play.
I'd much rather see Elite 5 than another expansion at this point. The technical debt is huge and there were some design mistakes along the way that would be hard to revert now Neither of them seem likely at this point, though. Sure I have my first discovery name on many stars and our PMF is doing great in BGS, but I wouldn't mind a reset.
Anyone who still praises Frontier is the very reason why ED died. Instead of drawing lines in the sand years and years ago everyone gobbled up frontiers BS of them updating the game with "Core game mechanics" which was a fancy way of saying...here are more ship skins and a different button for mining.
Like ALL game communities until gamers educate themselves what "End Game Content" actually is, ALL games will suffer a short lifespan and be very boring. Archeage and EVE online are the only 2 games that perfected "End Game Content" but sadly both were killed off by greedy devs. But the fact remains, END GAME is Super rare in a game, and even more rare done well.
ED could have had ENDLESS end game but everyone thinks Frontier has 300 devs working on ED when in fact it was just 5. Then youtubers sold ED for a decade never calling them out but instead just "Selling" the game and getting that nice paycheck from Google for making videos about it.
They don't need 5/10 years for a new game. They have almost 10 years of feedback of ED. They can make a new game pretty fast (kind of) but it needs to be with a modern game engine! This isn't a game for kids in their teens! This is a game for older (30+) gamers and if they include ship interiors (it's what players want), a little better FPS (more realistic weapons and armor) and same flight model! I played ED for almost 4 years straight, didn't play anything else (even bought a second account) but the Odyssey debacle ended the game for me. I was very disappointed with the FPS part! If they make ED2 I'm almost sure I would buy it!
What?. You mean a hand held gun shouldn’t take down the shields and destroy a space ship faster than the weapons of another space ship?
Who’da thunk it?
I know I hope your right. Id love to see a new version of Elite!
I always returned back to frontiers elite, had it on my C64 first and went ballistic 2014 to have this elite 4 on a PC with contemporary graphics and sound. If they decide to make an elite 5 I'm in as I always have.
Since the Thargoid story updates are not that engineering heavy, but require more artist and story engineer activity, it might be that behind the scenes they are working on a larger update. I think they also learned from the previous large patch releases that they shouldn't hype up any new updates before they are ready with it. Now this might be wishful thinking on my part, but I could see something like this being the case.
I think this is a good video. I agree, it makes no business sense to push on with ED and maintenance mode is what I expect to come. I will bow out about talk of ED or whatever they plan as I just don’t know. Sadly I do wonder if they have burnt too many bridges with the last couple of years (maybe longer)? I would love an ED 2, but only if they do much, much better than what they delivered with Odyssey!
walking around ships, sneaking on other peoples ships, and stealing them, safari's, multi crew, hang on... people are doing that in SC! is there a lesson to be learned?
After 10 years, i still love and play this game. Only expectation from Frontier is if they stop the EDO, then they can offline servers and let us to play offline mode whichever we want to change about game. They can move along to other games with it. Farewell Frontier, welcome EDO offline mode.
And that 93% is the player base that they have ignored. Us explorers were tossed to the curb and under the bus.
I think if Frontier waited a few years and then started to develop another elite it could be huge. Using everything they know and learned from developing E:D could be used to learn from those mistakes as well as having access to new technology to help the game run better like Unreal 5 for example. If they remade Elite:Dangerous but better it could be massive; they really need to retool and expand ideas like CQC for more casual action oriented players to keep more players involved. They also need to do atmospheric planets including weather systems its a massive undertaking but to be realistic it has to happen! We need to be able to fly on water worlds while water skiing behind an Anaconda! If they made every little part better like lighting from different stars etc. it could be what Starfield wished it could have been.
Can you make a deep dive hour+ video on what happened to elite and why it wound down into nothing. For example there being nothing in the shop worth buying and the how content gets drip fed to players. Basically a look at the life of the game from launch to now. Plus maybe getting comments from other elite RUclipsrs like how yamiks did with his ship reviews. I love the game but I know it's just about over especially for me on Xbox. In my opinion elite was a live service that it didn't want to be and a mmo that it didn't care to be.
Also in the video highlight some of the fun memories, like how towards the beginning a enemy ship near death would just stop and start rolling. Also have a bunch of rolling playlist of pictures going to show pictures of people playing with their friends. I never really associate with the "community's" of other games or fan bases because their always full of pathetic nerds but elite was a game that I would happily call myself part of the community. I miss flying my full beam Lazer Corvette with my buddy who flew a full armor piercing multi cannon anaconda. Maybe if frontier leaned harder into being a mmo combat would mostly be the same as it was at launch.
I hope so... it definitely could use an upgrade, But hopefully... they'll still stick to the identity of a "spacesim" and not giving up to the simplification trend nowadays and ends up with a mariokart version of a space game.... complete with magical ships summoning pocket and ship negating everywhere portal.
No man sky is what got me aware of the space sim genera but Elite Dangerous is what made me fall in love with it. I really hope they do a big overhaul to the on foot and planetary exploration part of it. Altough the space exloration part is the best in the genera, the on foot and planetary exploration feel really barebones and boring for about 90 percent of the planets you are allowed to land on and explore.
The problem is Frontier has released failure after failure over the last few years, excluding Elite. Their best hope is to sell themselves to someone with deep pockets. Odyssey gutted the player base. Console is stuck where it is forever. They don't have the money, the talent or the time to make an Elite 2. That would take real capital investment with money they do not have.
Sadly the whole world has seen a drop in market value the last few years. We need to elect better leaders. I love Elite and I hope that Frontier makes it through this.
Better leaders that can actually function would be amazing!
I really hope a sequel is on the way. Personally, I am a console (PS4) player, so my space-sim options are very slim, and I see nothing changing that for some time.
I put over 1200 hours into the game on Xbox when it launched along side The Long Dark as the first two games of the Xbox Preview Program way back in 2015/16 I wanna say. We even got an exclusive decal for our ships for playing the game that early on. I don’t have my hopes of FD continuing console support with the elite franchise after how they treated us when odyssey came out
Well. The problem with space games is the engine. What we see with Starfield is the result of throwing a ground based engine on a space setting. And the engine of ED is fundamentally broken and outdated. Dropping of Consoles MacOS and never supported more than 32-button controllers only to mention the top of the iceberg that is whats going wrong.
To bring up a proper next-gen-ED it would need hundreds of millions of dollars and minimum ten years of development. Nothing we will see in the near future. Unfortunately.
And with so much going on in PC Gaming industry… ARM Processors are unstoppable coming down the way. MacOS is on the rising as far as gaming is concerned and last but not least Linux and Handhelds will only grow from this point.
Over all i think Frontier is done. Well with only 10% what they were 2 years ago they are done already. Do not know much companies that were able to recover from such a loss.
For a company that relies on customer activity to generate revenue, it is essential to maintain communication with the player base. The closed-mouth approach that FD has been taking is not a sustainable strategy.
In order to keep players engaged and active, companies need to be transparent and communicative. This means providing regular updates on the game, new features, and upcoming events. It also means being responsive to player feedback and concern
They can barely keep up with the first game. I don't think they will make a second one.
I'd say it's time to sell concepts of ships that'll come out soon (tm) and to announce a singleplayer FPS version promoted with a teaser showing some Hollywood stars in space. Trick works to make lots of money, I heard.
If it was up to me, I'd make a few changes....but the biggest would be to call Elite: Dangerous 2 "Elite Dangerous: Colonia". Set the game 100 years in the future, but the Thargoids have spread out across the galaxy to the point that travel to/from the bubble is *possible*, but it's a REALLY long trip and very dangerous, ie not worth the risk.
I would fracture the Colonia area into a number of factions, including a couple of Imperial, Fed, and Alliance off-shoots, similar to what we have now. I would rework reputation as well, so if the faction you pledged to is hostile to another faction, and you are in their territory, there's a good chance you'll be engaged & destroyed. I would include a mechanic that would allow someone to remain 'neutral' and gain repuation for each faction, but the more reputation you gained with one, the less you would have with their enemies.
On the ships side, this would allow players to get entirely new ships, each with a different look (different cockpits?) and they could "import" one ship from ED: Odyssey to start with....
On the finance side, I would actually run with 3 games, Space travel (ie, vanilla), Vehicles (Horizons), and Ground (Odyssey), with a variety of options, vehicles & weapons that are unique to each game. Each game would be less expensive, no more than $20, but there would be a subscription plan to support the servers, say $5 to $10/mo that would provide additional benefits, especially in ARX, reputation, & credits and BGS. Subscribers though would *not* get additional engineering resources though, simply to keep it from becoming a Pay To Win model.
HI! I recently started playing Elite: Dangerous. The video game is great, unique, immense, I think on Steam it doesn't enjoy the visibility it deserves: the largest and most authentic space simulator is also the most difficult to find searching for video games by categories and tags.
That said, I think Elite is very very big to have a successor in the sense of a sequel, and I don't know how possible it is to make a better video game than Elite: Dangerous that should also be, I imagine, different from Elite: Dangerous, although Frontier could do that, given what it did: it could set an Elite 2 a few centuries later, for example.
Certainly those who have been playing for years would always like something new, while those like me who have just started only need a lot of time to complete, finish and get to know the game in every facet.
Cheers, CMDR!
Elite has been my computer driving force since 1983(I think). It has driven the improvements in my machine and hardware. It still seem the very best space game out there, I have wasted money on Starfield and a couple of others.
I would gladly fork out for Elite 2. On the basis it works straight out of the box.
Honestly, as much as I'd love an ED2, I think they would've had to have started development a few years ago to even have a chance.
At this rate, I don't actually see FDev continuing to make games/exist much by 2028.
The problem was the thargoid war. They just invested so much time and effort in it but resulted in a boring questlike thing to do. They should have made more ships, develope more on foot scenarios like stealing ships, destroy enemy settlements, salvage materials with the laser and sell them like iron plates, glass, aluminium debris something like that.
I love elite right up to this thargiod war but i have not played for a long time as i not a good bug hunter so when the war is over then i can come back and carry on playing
How many ED games will be released before SC finishes Alpha?
They stopped updating us console players!!!
Once I reached and got my hands on the Federal Corvette. I stopped playing it. I mean for me to get to 5 billion so I can get a ship carrier will take me another 3-4 years of gameplay. I’m a billionaire on it now … just one billion plus.
The financial problem has got be stuff like F1 manager, huge licensing cost and constant updates/rereleases, but will appeal to the accountants more because of sunk cost and a seemingly renewable income source.
If they turn off the servers would we be able to play in like an offline mode? Like solo play but offline.
Completely agree. We have seen this since the release of Odyssey. Using less resources by re-using existing assets to "carry" the game along with small incremental updates. I don't blame them either. Elite is a 10 year old game and they put all their eggs in the basket of Odyssey and it ended up being a bit of a poor decision. Highly unlikely we will see any major updates in the game's life.
Honestly the problem with frontier seems to be that they find it difficult to run a program of developmemt consistently over a long time.
I suspect Frontier may get taken over.
Given the relatively low amount of work that Frontier have done on elite I'm not sure they'll be developing another game anytime soon - there was a huge gap between first encounters ans elite dangerous. It really doesnt take much to keep ED going in it's current form with a CG every couple of weeks. But it's a shame we will never get atmospheric planets etc.
I would personally LOVE for somebody to buy the rights to Elite and created a new Elite (never mind the ‘Elite Dangerous’ brand, just a new Elite), which essentially learns lessons from the strengths and weaknessses of both ED and the likes of Starfield, Mass Effect and Star Citizen, and via an appropriate engine and good design creates a new game. I’ll dream of that, but I doubt Frontier in particular are remotely capable of delivering on such a game.
Frontier needs to add wayyyyyyyy more ship customization options.
They need to show some love to every single ship not just the crowd favourites.
The dang space-legs update.
Everyone's been wanting that since day one.
The more ship customization we get the more people would spend the money to buy the stuff.
The extraction and hazard kits? Best ship kits in the whole game.
They could even spruce up weapon and engine detailing by adding different particle effects.
They got a lot to clean up to, but also, they need far more content for every role, a lot of roles are becoming stupendously stale.
My biggest gripe though is the bubble.
We're tired of the bubble and want to expand it, simple as
I appreciate the optimism, but I cannot allow myself to be so hopeful for Elite's future, at least not anymore. Hopefully they surprise me but I highly doubt they will. It seems we're nearing the end of an era for Elite, but perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic. I'm not sure, there's just no telling what will happen next.
Elite Dangerous 2 would be very welcome. I would suggest they focus on the following:
(1) Updated Game Engine for current and next gen only (keep E:D online for those with old hw)
- - - A chance to address all the lingering limitations of a 12+ year old engine
- - - Add damage models to all ships and vehicles
(2) Focus on Gameplay - don't spend years creating a few ships, focus on fun gameplay NOT grind-play (reuse existing good assets with some upgrades)
- - - There needs to be more story to your path of becoming Elite. Engineers give us a glimpse of what this could be like
- - - Odyssey looks great, but gameplay is extremely sparse, especially if you don't like grinding the same exact kill missions over and over
(3) Catch up with the other games on the market
- - - New Engine should also support planetary base building - Fleet carriers show how this could work
- - - Add customizable interiors to all ships - we have customizable exteriors already, and walking around ships should be no big deal.
- - - New Planets with lots of life and breathable atmosphere
I said good bye after a particularly disingenuous dev rubbished their promise to let us get out of our chairs in our space ships, acting as if it was about how boring it would get running up and down the stairs.
Most of what Frontier produces is SHOVELWARE: Low effort low cost crap made for as little cash as possible. Elite was an exception. It was still crappy in many ways, but the set up of space and space flight was done in a brilliant way. Kudos for that.
Where it fell down was content... It barely was "ok" and the horrible planetary villages with stick figures were just embarrassing in multiple ways.
Honestly, at this point...I'd love to see an Elite Dangerous 2 but with Star Citizen/Starfield mixed in...I want there to be opportunities to be an actual insert into the world by doing jobs whether it's planetside and just running a cafe to being a gun smuggler or being a courier and delivering items...to full on ship delivery and mining and exploring...to being a bounty hunter or signing up with the Imperial/Federation and commanding a fleet carrier or doing missions to get ranked up and have accolades showing your progress through actual safehouses you choose to purchase and decorate
And obviously, more ships and ways to get around planetside like a speeder bike for the more "urban cityscapes"
I don't care how big the game is, I just want a game like that...I don't know...I feel like 3 games are 3 pieces to a bigger puzzle that need to be put together
You are correct, from a numbers perspective they should not focus on elite. A large part of audiences of channels like this one fails to understand that games of this type are not money printers. They have a higher than normal entry cost - in terms of hardware being it the actual computer system, Vr, hotas, joystick and so on. They also need to have a harder than normal learning curve , or else there is no reason to use controllers such as hotas , they require a slower type of gameplay , that alienates much of the "here and now" crowd that represent present some half the gaming community. I work in the game industry for 15 years, in studios that are 50 or even 100 times bigger than FDev, for years some of us have tried to set the bases for a space game, only to be turned down as a venture objectively more challenging and less profitable than other titles.
You are also too optimistic in regards timeframes. Unless they have some background done or plan to put some serious efforts in the near future, a serious game would only come out by 2030.
Yep it's so much easier to call for a sequel to Elite from a gaming chair than it is to plan it, fund it and code it.
Same with 'why don't they just add ...' type of complaints.
With advances in AI and procedural generation surely some of the technical limitations of ED could be overcome. I love the bones of this game, create flight model and huge scale but it didn’t always reward the effort and hours of grind with unique experiences it always felt like more of the same.
I would come back if there was an Elite 5. As much as I have zero respect for FDev, I loved ED and ED(H). I just think they screwed the pooch with ED(O), ergo I left. The non-gaming front runners telling us "we wouldn't want ship interiors cause it would take to long to run the length of the Conda to get to our cockpits and would get bored of it" kinda ruined it for me as well. Sure they play, but are they really in the know as much as say, Hawkes, The Pilot, D2EA, Obsidian Ant, Yamiks, Burr and the highly missed Exigeous? If they hired them to be front runners, listened to the players, brought back the girl that pioneered the planet tech and of course, brought in ship interiors, I would come back.
I am not surprised the revenue has been going down; for a game with a 10-year plan their monetization model makes very little sense. After the initial launch you can only expect to sell so many full games as time goes on. And with the exception of Odyssey I dont believe there has been any other 'DLC'. Then the only other 'constant' source of income are some ship kits and skins. I have plenty in-game credits but nothing worth spending them on. There are plenty of monetization models out there that they could learn from to inject new life, and money, into this game.
I believe that Horizons was the first paid expansion and Odyssey the second, nevertheless your point stands.
I hope to see some new and interesting ships and mechanics as well as making grinding somewhat fun
Part of Frontier's problem was focusing on the Thargoid grind that majority of players don't care to do. We've been asking for new ships. Instead we got suit skin microtransactions and an arguably very ugly construction ship skin.
The problem with elite dangerous is it cant decide what it wants to be a normal space sim or an MMO and ultimately inherits the worst of both. The sequel needs to pick one or the other if elite dangerous when fully into the MMO side of things with expanded player factions where the players actually run their factions it could be amazing. more realistically given frontiers financial situation I an imagine ED2 being a scaled down single player game with only the core star systems allowing FD to be free of the financial burden of running the servers. Something more inline with Ever space 2 where they could sell DLC without worrying about the recuring costs of an online game. I don't think most people appreciate just how expensive hosting and maintaining online games are.
They cant even get Elite dangerous to run properly and not at all on consoles so its very unlikely theres ever gonna be an Elite dangerous 2...
It's a good time to mention Sally. She's leaving frontier, and why? We'll never know, but your video is a sign of what's going on in the present. Also when they decided to break with xbox and playstation and not give them any more support. O7
I dunno, I'm not a fan of the idea of them making a new game. It would only serve to fracture the already shrinking player base I think. And one of the benefits of a "live service" type game like ED is that it can evolve over time and grow, rather than having to pump out a completely new game every two years. Now if they stuck with ED but did a complete rebuild of the game engine (maybe convert over to UE5) and rebulld of the game mechanics, that could work out really well; it would be the same level of effort as build a new game, but at least it wouldn't split the player base in two (and give them two games to have to maintain and manage).
I guess we'll see.
If the demand isn't served, I still think the tech-dev-astro-science-phile community may bring up a community developed alternative. AAA-RTS games suck for long, and right now there are 2 free to play projects that already smash payed competitors (e.g. Beyond all Reason). That might techwise be a unfair comparison but it can be done pretty sure
ED2 can work perfectly fine if they keep exploration data and if they keep CMDRs.
They needed planets with be biomes and player settlements. Give the players the tools to generate content. A game with elite flight mechanics and aesthetic, with a no man's sky procedural backend would be my ideal game.
Elite plus no man sky equals masterpiece.
If F-Dev had of listened to the people playing Elite people would still be buying skins and playing the game. They religiously ignore their community.
We already have a sequel. Called KSP 2. Wanna try again?
Nice analysis as ever, just wait and see now...
My main problem with ED is, that it is an online game. I am completely dependent on an infrastructure that in not under my control and can go away any time.
Speaking of time, the insane amount of time required is my second big issue.