*** The Official Elite: Dangerous Thread ***

[Havana_UK]

I have a picture in my head like a scene from Austin Powers... David says in a design meeting "we will have 1 miiiiiiiiiiiilllllliiiiiioooooon star system" *Design team s******s* and changes his mind to 100 billion

Stelly

Hehe

...and that's only a low-ball estimate for the number of stars in our Galaxy!

On a side note, has anyone been watching Stargazing Live? I knew that space wasn't really empty, but I had no idea how much rock & ice there was still floating about, particularly in the inner solar system. Wonder to what degree Frontier will be recreating this?

 

[Jokester]

Another update:-

Hi everyone,

after the excitement of last week it seems almost bizarre how crazy busy things have been this week. We've been busy putting everything together and this update is to tell you where we are with various things.

Before we get into the details of what comes next here is some new concept art of ships limping home:

So what comes next? Apart from the obvious 'making the game' we have a number of rewards that we now need to provide. To do this we'll need various pieces of information from you. To manage this process we're creating a web app that will be based on our website that will allow you to manage your pledge rewards, select add-ons and organise gift pledges. You will also be able to increase your pledge (or make your first pledge) via PayPal if you wish. The system will be online within the next two weeks.

In the meantime you can still pledge via PayPal on our website:

http://elite.frontier.co.uk

We will also be setting up the new backers, design and writers forums. These will be online by the end of the month. In the meantime you can access our public forums that are open to everyone and can be found at:

http://forums.frontier.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=29

The first newsletter will be posted in early February and we'll have some new cool stuff to report. We're still looking into the details, but at the moment our expectation is that we'll send out the newsletter every two weeks and we'll also have a more in depth dev diaries from David or myself or other members of the team every month. Although we'll post additional dev diaries as needed when we have cool new things to show or tell you about. The dev diaries will be posted as Kickstarter updates.

As is traditional we'll close this update with a book plug. Kate Russell's 'Mostly Harmless' Kickstarter is still running and she's now working towards her stretch goal of an audio book. Visit her project below to provide your support:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/katerussell/mostly-harmless-an-elite-dangerous-novel-working-t

So once again thanks to everyone for your support. We are making this game!

Michael

 

[Glaucus]

Oh god, I can see me upping my pledge again now. Only went £25, if I can spread the cost out I think the is it £90 reward.

 

[Cavallino]

Need to archive these comments for when the game comes out incase its a massive dissapointment

 

[derv]

Disappointment? This is Elite by the very man Braben himself. How can it possibly be anything less than awesome.

...now I sound like a fanboy who has thrown a few hundred quid at a game that's a good year off publication. Nostalgia is a very bad thing

 

[Zenduri]

Im quite suprised at how much hype Elite has got based on nostalgia, yet Star citizen has been more successfull yet a lot less hype here

 

[Nate--IRL--]

Im quite suprised at how much hype Elite has got based on nostalgia, yet Star citizen has been more successfull yet a lot less hype here

It's closer to home. Elite was perhaps the epitome of extracting the most out of micro computers at the time. It stems from when Britain lead the world in this field.

Nate

 

[Booner!]

With that many star systems we should do pool resources for fuel factory and space station, then go to the far region of space, where mining and other stuff will be so plentiful.

Agreed, I think we'd have a good mix of roles within this forum alone.

 

[silversurfer]

Disappointment? This is Elite by the very man Braben himself. How can it possibly be anything less than awesome.

Similar kind of hype was around the frontier game. I know we've come lightyears since then but successfully capturing gameplay and putting it into a game is a lot harder then mining space debris

 

[Cavallino]

Ive invested into this more than any other game ever.. but I can quite clearly see the amount of hype behind it each time Braben anounces a new "feature" or "aspect" to ED which suddenly gets blown into greater proportions (I too am guilty of this).

I think generally the expectation from people who pledged is going to be a lot higher, but Elite has a lot ore competition compared to when it dominated back in its first and second itteration.

 

[V3teran]

Ive pledged a lot for both games but i think once both games have all or most of there features i think ED will wipe the floor with SC tbh.

 

[Anon-e-mouse]

SC is almost a reboot of Wing Commander with Privateer bolted onto the endgame. Which of itself, isn't a bad thing.

E: D is more of your genuine sandbox.

It will certainly be a interesting 2014, that's for sure.

 

[FutileBreadMachine]

I just watched one of the developer diaries where David Braben talks about how players can influence the evolution of star systems, but it looks like this can be played either single player or multiplayer. So is this an MMOG? How does it work if you start playing single player then go on to multiplayer? I guess it uses 2 universes?

 

[Jokester]

It's played on a single server, so you can either play it multiplayer, but with limited numbers of people in your instance (something of the order 32-64), or you can play it online yourself so no one else enters your instance. You can also play offline so the galaxy is static.

Bit worried now about the Design Decisions Forum now, most people seem to be quite happy for it taking days to get anywhere in the galaxy. I know it needs to retain the scale, but there has to be some slack for gameplay reasons!

 

[FutileBreadMachine]

Ah I see. Sounds a bit like Eve online, but I hope it's not as drawn out as that. AFAIK in that game takes ages to do anything.

 

[Adnams Drinker]

It's played on a single server, so you can either play it multiplayer, but with limited numbers of people in your instance (something of the order 32-64), or you can play it online yourself so no one else enters your instance. You can also play offline so the galaxy is static.

So does each 'instance' have to have a minimum of 32 players? By that mean could I play a multiplayer game with just my brother and me? We played the original Elite on the BBC Micro back in the day and to be able to play together would be beyond awesome ...

 

[Jokester]

So does each 'instance' have to have a minimum of 32 players? By that mean could I play a multiplayer game with just my brother and me? We played the original Elite on the BBC Micro back in the day and to be able to play together would be beyond awesome ...

From what's been said about it, you can limit online play to just yourself and your friends if you want to.

 

[Kenai]

Bit worried now about the Design Decisions Forum now, most people seem to be quite happy for it taking days to get anywhere in the galaxy. I know it needs to retain the scale, but there has to be some slack for gameplay reasons!

This is a problem, when you consider the nature of people who will devote that much money to a game, you realise there is a good chance many of them will also be willing to devote much of their lives to it as well, so things such as your example I suspect could end up becoming commonplace.

As you say, there needs to be balance but it sounds like the design forum is showing signs of 'extremism' in terms of the attitude towards gameplay already.

Hopefully that won't persist and the decision making will mellow out a little, otherwise they risk pushing the game into solely hardcore fan territory where not many people other than current backers will be interested. Given the current backers have paid for it to be made, they'll need to appeal and sell to a wider audience to generate some actual profit...

 

[frankmcg]

Does it matter if it makes a profit? It's not like the current backers are expecting a return on their investment beyond the game getting made?

 

[derv]

It's far too early to be worrying. All we have at the moment are a few development videos with little information and a ton of people on the forums speculating and discussing features that may not be possible or have already been decided by Frontier.

Things will certainly quiet down when the DDF goes live because of reduced numbers. I'm hopeful that Frontier will have a vote type system when decisions are needed rather than a "he who shouts loudest" approach. Of course there needs to be some discussion but hopefully not a free-for-all like it is at the moment.