FRONTIER EXPO 2017 - Thoughts, Opinions & General Chat.

[CMDR NIVALLICA]

Good Morning All CMDR's!

So it's been 3 days since the very first Frontier Expo - were any of you lucky enough to attend?

What is everyone's thoughts on 2.4 & Beyond? Excited for the year ahead? Unexpected and taking a different direction to what you assumed? What are you CMDR's most looking forward to? Were any of you left disappointed?

Is it the near future updates continuing the Thargoid story arch that has got you salivating?

How about the Q1 update which will introduce new mechanics to keep you at the edge of your seat? Improvements to system authority ships—which will act accordingly based on the severity of your crimes? A better trade system, so that you know which items are best sold at a higher price. If you play with friends, you’ll also see more wing-based missions that will put your teamwork skills to the test? Has this got your fingers twitching?

Or the "big one!" - the Q4 update which will bring about a clan-like feature called “Squadrons” and with it the epic fleet carriers? Did this get you off your seat jumping for joy or did you fall to your knees in dispair at the lack of Space Legs and atmospheric landings?

Not to forget the smaller content drops which will land in between these major updates. These include new missions, scenarios, and even ships, such as the recently revealed Krait and Chieftain fighter ships?

How about their commitment to improve many of the game’s visual features such as lighting, ambient and volumetric effects, and the scatter rock system? Or the audio enabled Galnet?

Get in here CMDR's - share your thoughts!?

[Daniel Greystone]

No thankfully

Fdev have never failed to disappoint me with ED.

Pffft No! Thargoid shmargoid

Why have these had to wait till now. All we've had for the past 3 years is cobbled together "features" most of which appear to have been designed and implemented by a 5 year old after the minimum amount of Q&A and still full of the bugs reported in the minimal "beta". Some of these "features" still don't work "as hyped" months and years after release.

Meh

Meh again

About time

Hung up my flight suit months ago, nothing at Fdev "Expo Hype'o' 17" has altered my opinion

[tinnitus]

Elite Dangerous an amazing game and keeps getting better - looking forward to many visual improvements, some planets look like they been wrapped in grey Duck Tape Being a Trader any improvements there are welcomed, I think the Trade in E:D can be a game within itself. I hope there are improvements for us "VR" players, certainly would be great if one could play in "VR" and not have to remove the headset just to do some in game task or write a quick note. Clear to me that Frontier intends to build E:D for many years to come. Awesome.

[Wulfy]

I didn't go but I watched it all "live" as I prepared the dinner

Its all good to me although my main concern is how ED will compare with Star Citizen in a year or two's time when its possibly released as frankly even in the state SC is in now its highly pretty and seems like very strong competition for peoples cash. Everyone has a "roadmap" - you have to know where your company is going in the years ahead and Im just thinking that ED's roadmap may not be quite good enough to out compete the competition.

[LeDoyen]

Star Citizen is still mainly a bugged expensive demo. it's really far from release quality, and competition only worries those who want to be worried
The fanboys brag about which is best but who cares? i'd gladly play both. They are different enough to be complementary in dealing with my lazy evening hours ^^

As for Frontier Expo, really like the new planets ! Very often i approach one and the craters look like they are on a square grid. Terrain textures are also very repetitive and so far the only variation we see is what pastel tone the ground is painted with. Very NMS here, super bright and flashy.

I am with Obsidianant on dark sides of planets too. Having them properly dark would be a huge bonus. Maybe adding some moonlight whenever.. there's a moon, could add to the ambience.
The new textures : badass. Looks like proper planets. being able to differentiate icy worlds with searing hot rocky worlds shouldn't be a stretch of the imagination!

Mining, not too much details but again, it's looking way more "realistic" if we can properly deplete an asteroid rather than scratch a few dents and call it done.
This goes with all the trading revamp too, seems we're going towards a more RPG style commodities system. As long as it's not just a list with numbers Excel style, it will already add a little bit of immersion.

Squadrons, carriers, i dont give a flying fuck (or a floating fuck, we're in zero G ^^). Combat will still be the most boring part of any game to me and Elite is already too heavily combat oriented. Pretty much all updates we saw were 90% combat and 10% bug correction. Thank god for the 20kLY plotting. that was a welcomed pebble. Shooting is nice as a part of something bigger but not as the main goal (personal opinion).

The new ships, as always, pretty happy about them ^^ I heard "A LOT more are coming", so, hopefully, some new multiroles to come too. I'm particularely interested in ships in between Cobra 3 and Python, so the Krait looks already pretty appealing, besides the obvious nostalgia value.

I hope they have new SRVs in the box to go along with new planetary activities.. maybe a fat-ass prospector for surface mining with new sensor suites to make mining more varied.


All in all, they had some nice announcements but it was all very vague.. peek preview really, so we'll see where the wind blows.

[Xebeth]

There was much to like in the Expo stuff even if the details were light on most of the stuff.

1) Exploration improvements - I want to go exploring again, but the repetitive beige planets stop me, so improved colours and textures, along with new phenomenon should bring interest back to this, plus the codex sounds interesting.
2) New ships are always nice
3) Personal narrative - not interested in being the hero, just something unique to my Commander would add interest
4) Mining - needs some love, I have a deep space mining conda that rarely gets used, would be good to be able to go off for a few weeks and come back rich wild west style, but a the moment it's too one dimensional.
5) Squadrons, etc. - I can see some interesting BGS use here, but depending on how easy it is to move the carriers (jump range and the like) I can also see mining expeditions and stuff like that, plus squadron management alone brings a new game play aspect for those that like that sort of stuff (JL will love it).
6) Continued story - while beyond going and looking at stuff I don't really participate, I still like to follow the stories, much in the same way as I watch the news (I'm not ever going to be part of Catalan's independence movement but I'm still interested in seeing what happens).

So overall I'm happy with what they showed, plus (for me at least) it shows their commitment to the game, I can see no logic in spending a year updating and adding stuff for free if you are going to drop support.

Will it be full of bugs? Probably. Do I care? Not really, it's full of bugs now, but it's still the game I play the most. Will some of the feature be badly implemented? Without doubt, but then I'll do what I have always done, and play the bits I like and ignore the stuff I don't.

[Roger Wilco Jr]

Hmm, only heard about stuff in this thread. I'm disappointed to hear about story arc expansions. If I'm not mistaken, if you try to follow a story arc, you need to do it while it is happening, and you basically need to get your information and discuss things in threads on the main forums. This is where ED has really disappointed me. I'd much rather it was a solo offline game where you can be introduced to and follow all the various story arcs at your own pace. Even though I try to avoid vids these days, and have not played for ages, I can't help hearing little slips hear and there that basically ruin that aspect of the game.

I'm happy to hear about new ships and better planetary graphics, but if they don't bring back pitch black dark sides of planets, I'll probably just continue to not play out of frustration. Although I do have new rudder pedals coming in the next month or so, and I do want to try to learn 100% FAoff flying, or maybe I'll just finally get into playing BOS, which I found less than useless w/o rudder pedals.

I've also repeatedly heard about FD not introducing expansions or seasons or upgrades for ED, so it sounds like that was BS. I thought maybe they were trying to get around the lifetime expansion passes by introducing "new" games instead, so I'd like to hear some confirmation about that not happening.

So basically - meh.

[CMDR NIVALLICA]

I'm glad to hear that the majority of responses are positive and looking forward to the future!

So overall I'm happy with what they showed, plus (for me at least) it shows their commitment to the game, I can see no logic in spending a year updating and adding stuff for free if you are going to drop support.

A brilliant point Xebeth! I for one have invested heavily in this game. It sounds strange to call it a game... I see it more as a past time, a hobby and a brilliant way to relax. Akin to reading a good book or putting headphones on, closing your eyes and listening to your favourite music. It's simply brilliant. Expanding on this graphically, with content and more cogs to improve the overall mechanics of the game as a whole is welcome, every time!

my main concern is how ED will compare with Star Citizen in a year or two's time when its possibly released as frankly even in the state SC is in now its highly pretty and seems like very strong competition for peoples cash.

I think that LeDoyen has a point:

They are different enough to be complementary in dealing with my lazy evening hours

SC does look absolutely stunning! But it will play completely different to ED. I know I will dip in and be in awe of its achievements but for me, ED has my investment in so many ways. The community is also unmatched. After all... I'm here rather than the SC forums.

I am with Obsidianant on dark sides of planets too. Having them properly dark would be a huge bonus. Maybe adding some moonlight whenever.. there's a moon, could add to the ambience.
The new textures : badass. Looks like proper planets. being able to differentiate icy worlds with searing hot rocky worlds shouldn't be a stretch of the imagination!

Amen! As ObsidianAnt said in one of his recent videos - FD tend to get very close to their concept art. So if what we were shown at FE17 then this is going to be a very, very welcome addition. I can see a lot of traders, combatants and everyone in between dipping into or delving deep into exploration.

I hope there are improvements for us "VR" players, certainly would be great if one could play in "VR" and not have to remove the headset just to do some in game task or write a quick note.

Have you seen Samsung's delve into VR (not the gear... the Odyssey? I've not delved into VR yet so I may be talking rubbish. I want to in the future. But apparently their new headset is great for hinging up. Or do you mean the ability to jot notes down in game? That would be pretty sweet.

I hope they have new SRVs in the box to go along with new planetary activities.. maybe a fat-ass prospector for surface mining with new sensor suites to make mining more varied.

Now wouldn't that be a thing!! A feck off JCB style SRV! Something with a tank style track chassis!

Any more for any more CMDR's!?

[de Carabas]

SRV wise there must be another ready to go and I'm surprised it's taken this long. One of the newsletters months ago had a different SRV in a picture and I assumed we would get it sooner (no I can't remember which one but I know I posted on it at the time).

New ships - We get the Krait. I have to admit I assumed it would be smaller. I had wondered if they would use the Krait design as an SLF.

In terms of the updates, as long as they keep improving stuff and fixing bugs then I'm happy. They've said before that a lot of the features released were v1's that would set the ground work for further enhancements and tieing stuff together. That's where I hope we can get deapth.

In terms of the comparison to SC I think we need to keep in mind the two approaches are so very different. FD have released bits of their vision as they have gone in order to raise cash to keep going. For SC the money raised has topped $150million so far and delivered (nearly) nothing, and a release date that has slipped by 3 years so far. Personally I'm happy with the extra three years of game time I've had in ED even with the occasional buggy update or annoying featured enhancement.

[TorTorden]

Star Citizen isn't going to deliver on anything.

Not until Chris Roberts gets his usual motivation.
From us who actually remember this guy.
Let's take his last game, Freelancer.
Same deal, was referred to as the definition of feature creep, postponed then postponed again.
Eventually Microsoft who was funding Digital Anvil (his company) and the game.
Got so fed up with him THEY bought his company, fired Chris Roberts and pushed freelancer out the door in a few months.

Yeah this isn't going to go anywhere before the backers take him to the courts.