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Elite Dangerous

Started by Alberon, July 22, 2014, 09:19:25 PM

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Alberon

Remember this?

[nb]What do you mean you weren't born then?[nb]Young whippersnappers don't show any respect these days[nb]Get off my lawn![/nb][/nb][/nb]

Anyway, a couple of decades after the last version David Braben has used Kickstarter to fund a new version - Elite Dangerous.


At the moment it's in what is called 'Premium Beta' which is more an advanced alpha build more than anything. There are just a half dozen systems available, only three types of ships you can fly and a lot of features still to add (such as fuel usage).

I've caved and bought the Premium Beta option and so far I like it. Combat works a lot better than it has since the first game, you turn best as a shown speed on your speedometer. Docking is a bit hair-raising at times, as when you have permission you fly straight into the station through a narrow slot and land on the designated pad.

Beta 1 is coming at the end of the month. More features are being added, but I don't know if the number of star systems will be opened up to the millions (possibly billions) promised in the final game. The game itself is an MMO, though you can change the settings if you want so you never encounter another player, only NPCs.

It's still too early to tell if it is worthy of the name, but it looks promising so far.

thraxx


ELite and Elite II were just fucking astonishgly vast games for their time.  Can't wait to see what you think about this latest version.

£50 for a beta build!! Fuck RIGHT off.

Oh god, and that doesn't even include the DLC.

"IMPORTANT: Requires the Elite: Dangerous game. The Lifetime Expansion Pass is not a standalone product. (Both the Elite: Dangerous Alpha and Premium Beta products include an expansion pass.)"

FUCK DOUBLE RIGHT OFF.

QuoteBy taking part in Beta you will have the opportunity for you to play, test and feedback to us.

OH, THANK YOU SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH.

lazarou

#3
Can't help feeling he left this one a little too late and it's going to end up looking very weak next to the genuinely jaw-dropping No Man's Sky. That's a potential game-changer if ever there was one.

EDIT:
Quote£50 for a beta build!! Fuck RIGHT off.
This is starting to become a nasty habit. GalCiv 3 is currently $100 to try. Civ IV designer Soren Johnston's new game will set you back $80 and a signed Non-Disclosure Agreement. Now you too can pay full whack for something you're legally prohibited from complaining about yet, on the strength of almost no available information! Fleecing your captive audience is definitely the hot new thing.

Mister Six

I think the principle is sound. You don't want to open up beta to everybody, because most folks - people who don't understand what a beta is, or what you're building towards in the final game - will slag off what is basically an unfinished product and kill it before it's even launched. You also don't want to fork out for bandwidth if people are going to download the beta on a whim and then not bother playing it.

So you rack up the price, ensuring that only people who are committed to the principle of playing a beta game and contributing genuine, thoughtful advice will actually play.

Everyone else can just buy it when it's released, like they were going to all along. They haven't lost anything.

Not giving the DLC as a reward is a cheap move, though, if you're making the beta considerably more expensive than the finished game. EDIT: Though thinking about it, it minimises the number of people buying the beta to save in the long term, then complaining about the lack of fuel/planets/whatever.

lazarou

Quote from: Mister Six on July 23, 2014, 06:57:54 AM
I think the principle is sound. You don't want to open up beta to everybody, because most folks - people who don't understand what a beta is, or what you're building towards in the final game - will slag off what is basically an unfinished product and kill it before it's even launched. You also don't want to fork out for bandwidth if people are going to download the beta on a whim and then not bother playing it.
Does that really happen all that often though? I'm struggling to think of many examples of games that died on the vine, and there's been no shortage of open betas. Even garbage cookie-cutter MMOs are generally given the benefit of the doubt pre-release. Games like Mount & Blade and Cortex Command trundled along as a set of fun mechanics wrapped in barely a game for years, to great success.

And I really don't see how raising the price helps. Charging a nominal fee would have the same effect in removing casual dabblers from the equation, and has been the method early access games have been following to this point, with little complaint. Suggesting charging more is somehow keeping the riff-raff out, well, there's little evidence this is something that even happens. If it's not entirely free, most people aren't going to bother playing a mostly-broken game unless they have some kind of interest in its development.

QuoteSo you rack up the price, ensuring that only people who are committed to the principle of playing a beta game and contributing genuine, thoughtful advice will actually play.
Why does this ensure those people are committed to the beta process? Perhaps those people feel like they've contributed enough already, perhaps they just want first dibs on a new game in a series they're crazy about. What is it about paying more that makes them better testers exactly, or their advice any more worthwhile? The only thing paying more ensures is that they really want the game that badly, or they've just got more money to burn. That and you're going to have a lot less advice.

I can say what might make them worse candidates, in my experience: if you're dealing with testers with no experience in QA, most people won't offer much and much of what they do offer will be of little help. If you're looking to amateurs to help test things out, the best thing you can do is get as many (reasonably engaged) players as you can, and then maybe you'll get something useful out of it. I doubt limiting your testing pool to a tiny handful of unqualified VIPs is going to help much.


Alberon

In this case it did fund the game. This was a Kickstarter after all, and there were three different periods of entry based on how much you paid. If you paid more, you got into the Alpha, a little less and you were in the 'Premium' Beta and the rest got into the standard Beta launching next week. So I have no complaints over what they did.

Myself, I paid £50 back in the original Kickstarter last year, and then doubled that to get into the so-called premium Beta. Even the lower amount comes with a copy of the final game and the upped amount comes with a lifetime pass on the DLC.

RickyGerbail

#7
It could be a simple matter of price inelasticity as well, if you can get the most money by charging a small amount of people a very high price then that could be a smart strategy to maximise the budget for the game. Personally i'm glad that these advanced space flight sims are being made at all after about 15 years of nothing, so the more funds Braben, Roberts and the hello guys have available the better.

NoSleep

Hi Ricky.

This game will probably encourage me to buy a newer Mac in order to play it. That's all I have to say. I'm currently replaying NES Elite.

I like how Braben is hinting at the truth in the title. The 'Elite' are indeed dangerous. They cleave through space with their aquiline hulls and little piggy windows, dock in their six pointed spacestations and constantly play off the gentile aliens of Diso and Leesti against each other by playing the margins on radioactives and slaves.

Big Jack McBastard

Think I'll wait till it's done, and cracked, and free.

NoSleep

There isn't isn't a finer feeling than, on a drug run, pursued by Galcops, to take out all their vehicles, scoop up their escape pods, then sell them as slaves at the next space station[nb]Not sure if this works in original Elite; I certainly did this a lot in Oolite.[/nb]. They call it freedom.

Jim_MacLaine

Watched a few videos  of this and was interested to see they are going to introduce ship interiors you can walk around a la Star Citizen. I can understand this. That whole ship porn thing is a big draw for me.

Alberon

In the game you can look around the cockpit as well. Comms and navigation are handled by looking to the left and system optimisation is found by looking to the right. Power can be shifted between weapons, systems and engines. So if you want to run away from something you ramp up the engines while dialing down the other two.

The two side screens can be accessed far more organically if you were wearing an Oculus VR rig, which the game will work with. But I'm not allowed to buy that when it comes out as apparently it isn't essential and there's much more important stuff to get what with our baby being due in four months.

Jim_MacLaine

This guy has set up audible commands which does look cool. Especially when it doesn't quite work (realism).

http://youtu.be/9iJJrk9wGj8?t=13m49s


NoSleep

Quote from: Alberon on July 23, 2014, 02:42:09 PM
But I'm not allowed to buy that when it comes out as apparently it isn't essential and there's much more important stuff to get what with our baby being due in four months.

Like extra hours in the day to be able to play video games.

thraxx

Quote from: Jim_MacLaine on July 23, 2014, 03:08:44 PM
This guy has set up audible commands which does look cool. Especially when it doesn't quite work (realism).

http://youtu.be/9iJJrk9wGj8?t=13m49s

Christ it looks amazing.  I must never ever be allowed to play this game.

Quote from: Jim_MacLaine on July 23, 2014, 03:08:44 PM
This guy has set up audible commands which does look cool. Especially when it doesn't quite work (realism).

http://youtu.be/9iJJrk9wGj8?t=13m49s

Damn it. Now I'm interested.

gabrielconroy

Wow! I've been waiting for this game since Privateer II, more or less. I played Freelancer and some other one, but they weren't the same, didn't have the magic. I also played the original Elite on my Dad's Atari ST to death. Pew pew! Buy iron ore! Fly around! Stars! Planets! Shields Critical!!!

Alberon

Beta 1 launches today though I'm not going to get a chance to play it until tomorrow at the earliest. Here's the update info.

QuoteThere are now 55 star systems covering 38,000 cubic light year. Player to player communication by voice and text, friends management and matchmaking. Private group and online single player options. Fuel consumption and docking computers for safe star port landings. Plus an overview of trade route mapping and the beginnings of online mission systems.

While the game needs to connect online, there are several different modes you can select. You can either have the full MMO experience, encountering other players, or you can set it so you will only ever see NPCs and your friends, or just NPCs.

HappyTree

Will playing it as an MMO cost a subscription? If I ever got this game I'd play it as a single-player, but if the other options are free then I'd probably try them out a bit.

Alberon

There won't be a subscription. Instead they're going down the route of paid expansions for the game. One benefit of the premium beta I bought into is that it comes with a lifetime pass (which is no longer available) for those.

Even in single player mode you're still connected to their servers, but you just won't see another player.

RickyGerbail

i'd gladly pay a subscription for this game, like 20 quid a month, just so they'd keep pushing out new space stations, planets, different cool space phenomena and ships. Right now there are two space stations as far as i can tell and not exactly a great array of ships, this game really needs extreme amounts of content to become fascinating to explore. The online beta was released yesterday and i've been playing a bit, it's buggy but it's a very atmospheric and fun game. 

Quote from: RickyGerbail on July 30, 2014, 02:11:42 PM
i'd gladly pay a subscription for this game, like 20 quid a month

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhut up. Don't tell them things like that.

RickyGerbail

I've already made a thread on the David Braben forums that have been stickied by the developers about this, it seems like it's a very popular idea, most people are not happy with only paying 20 quid a month though. We'll see how things develop.

Quote from: RickyGerbail on July 30, 2014, 08:20:06 PM
I've already made a thread on the David Braben forums that have been stickied by the developers about this, it seems like it's a very popular idea, most people are not happy with only paying 20 quid a month though. We'll see how things develop.

I swear to god Gerbail... I fucking swear to god.

HappyTree

I have to be connected to play single player? Ah ok. It coulda been a contender.

mook

Quote from: HappyTree on July 31, 2014, 07:27:11 AM
I have to be connected to play single player? Ah ok. It coulda been a contender.

just out of curiosity, why does it matter if you have to be connected to the net to play?

Alberon

I don't know the whole answer to that one, I'll have a look on the forums, but I expect one part of it is trading. Prices do fluctuate and will crash if everyone floods the market with the same item.