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The game had a successful launch and the problems were 2 weeks after. Don't mislead the public.
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===Early server problems===
===Early server problems===
Shortly after launch, problems were encountered by what Frontier called a "relatively small" number of players.<ref>{{cite web|title=Elite Dangerous has big problems right now|url=http://www.incgamers.com/2015/01/elite-dangerous-has-big-problems-right-now|website=www.incgamers.com|accessdate=4 January 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Elite Dangerous Servers Hit by Variety of Errors and Bugs|url=http://segmentnext.com/2015/01/03/elite-dangerous-servers-hit-variety-errors-bugs/|website=segmentnext.com|accessdate=3 January 2015}}</ref>
Two weeks after the relatively smooth launch, problems were encountered by what Frontier called a "relatively small" number of players.<ref name="massively-server" /><ref>{{cite web|title=Elite Dangerous Servers Hit by Variety of Errors and Bugs|url=http://segmentnext.com/2015/01/03/elite-dangerous-servers-hit-variety-errors-bugs/|website=segmentnext.com|accessdate=3 January 2015}}</ref>
These had a major impact on most key gameplay mechanics, with problems including multiple server disconnections, entire cargos being lost, large amounts of money being deleted, goods unable to be sold, scans not functioning, ship customisations and upgrades being deleted, and missing recently purchased ships.<ref name="massively-server">{{cite web|title=Elite: Dangerous server goes haywire, creates instant billionaires|url=http://massively.joystiq.com/2015/01/02/elite-dangerous-server-goes-haywire-creates-instant-billionair/|website=Massively|accessdate=4 January 2015}}</ref>
These had a major impact on most key gameplay mechanics, with problems including multiple server disconnections, entire cargos being lost, large amounts of money being deleted, goods unable to be sold, scans not functioning, ship customisations and upgrades being deleted, and missing recently purchased ships.<ref name="massively-server">{{cite web|title=Elite: Dangerous server goes haywire, creates instant billionaires|url=http://massively.joystiq.com/2015/01/02/elite-dangerous-server-goes-haywire-creates-instant-billionair/|website=Massively|accessdate=4 January 2015}}</ref>


Revision as of 21:01, 4 January 2015

"Elite 4" redirects here. For the Pokémon characters, see List of Pokémon characters § Elite Four.

Elite: Dangerous
File:EliteDangerous Logo2.png
Elite: Dangerous logo
Developer(s)Frontier Developments
Designer(s)David Braben
EngineCOBRA[2]
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows, OS X
Genre(s)Space trading and combat, MMO,[3] first-person shooter in a later expansion[4]
Mode(s)Online multiplayer, online single-player

Elite: Dangerous is a space adventure, trading, and combat simulator that is the fourth installment in the Elite video game series. Piloting a spaceship, the player explores a realistic 1:1 scale open world galaxy based on the real Milky Way, with the gameplay being open-ended. The game is the first in the series to attempt to feature massively multiplayer gameplay, with players' actions affecting the narrative story of the game's persistent universe, while also retaining single player options. It is the sequel to Frontier: First Encounters,[5] the third game in the Elite series, released in 1995.

Having been unable to agree to a funding deal with a publisher for many years, the developer began its Kickstarter campaign in November 2012. Pre-release test versions of the game had been available to backers since December 2013, and the final game was released for Windows on 16 December 2014.[1]

Gameplay

Elite: Dangerous is set in the year 3300, around 45 years after the previous game in the series,[5][6][7] and retains the basic premise of previous games - players start with a spaceship and a small amount of money and have to make their own way in an open galaxy, furthering themselves either legally or illegally, through trading, bounty-hunting, piracy and assassination.[8]

The player is able to explore the game's galaxy of some 400 billion star systems,[9] complete with planets and moons that rotate and orbit in real-time, resulting in dynamic day/night cycles.[10] Although mostly generated by procedural generation according to scientific models,[11] around 150,000 star systems are taken from real-world astronomical data.[11]

Throughout the galaxy, the player is able to dock with many space stations and outposts (of which there are several designs) in order to trade goods, purchase new spacecraft, re-arm their ship, effect repairs and to seek or complete text-based missions.

Elite: Dangerous features a massively multiplayer online game, persistent world, with an online-only single player mode.[3]

Development

Elite 4 was to be the third sequel to 1984's Elite, a game that David Braben and his former associate, Ian Bell, wrote for the BBC Micro computer, and ported to most other platforms of the day. At the 2011 Game Developers Conference, Braben presented a post-mortem discussing the development of Elite. The final question in the Q&A section asked if Elite 4 was still on the drawing board and he replied "yes, it would be a tragedy for it not to be."[12]

The project, referred to as Elite 4, had difficulty in finding funds, which Braben has attributed to the traditional publishing model, which he sees as being biased against games which have no recent predecessors.[13] Discussing crowdfunding in April 2012, Braben said he had considered doing "something along those lines".[14] In November 2012, a few days after Kickstarter went live in the UK,[15] Frontier Developments announced that the game was now named Elite: Dangerous, and would be funded on that site, aiming to raise £1.25m and deliver a game in 18 months,[16] by March 2014.[17] The Kickstarter project remained open for 60 days, and rewards included a digital copy of the game, standard and premium boxed copies, a T-shirt, and access to alpha and beta test versions of the game. Funding was also made possible through the game's website, via PayPal.[16] By April 2014, the campaign had raised £1.7m,[18] and Braben had reacquired the rights to the Elite franchise.[19]

Elite: Dangerous was developed using Frontier Development's own in-house COBRA game development engine.[20] The developer stated: "As a developer we’ve used our own game engine throughout the company’s history so we have considerable experience in our own technology. For Elite: Dangerous the game presents a number of challenges that we have to solve. The first (and most obvious) is the scale of the game, putting aside the requirements of procedural generation for a moment the spatial size of the game’s locations are an immense (pun intended!) problem. It’s quite common in space games to fudge the scale to make things look good and work, however this results in spatial locations being condensed. In Elite everything is the scale it should be, so the planets are the correct size and distances between objects are also correct. Using the Cobra engine means that we can tailor our solutions to fit the game rather than the other way round."[21] In October 2013, it was announced that the game would officially support the Oculus Rift VR headset.[22][23] The game's original budget was £8 million and by September 2014 this had, in Braben's words, "grown by quite a lot".[24]

When interviewed in December 2012, the development team were considering allowing the actions of players to affect the narrative story[25] of the wider galaxy within the game, such as the type of missions and quests that will be generated by the event system.[26][27][28][29] The developers have often noted how the previous games lend themselves naturally to modern online gaming - for example, destroying an innocent ship has always led to a criminal record and to police attention in systems rich enough to afford law enforcement, which could provide a powerful anti-griefing mechanism in a multiplayer game.[30] The developers considered allowing players to play within small, trusted groups, so that any in-game encounters are only drawn from that group.[8]

A playable alpha version of the game was released to certain Kickstarter backers in December 2013.[31][32] In May 2014, Frontier Developments announced the fourth phase of Alpha testing was underway for the game. The latest Alpha build offered players a more expanded game world with more scale, scope and depth.[33] On 30 May 2014, Frontier Developments officially launched the "Premium Beta" phase of Elite Dangerous. It incorporated all major features added during the alpha phase and focused primarily on testing the systems and servers with a greater number of players.[34] The game entered its Beta 1 phase in July 2014[35] and its Beta 2 phase launched on 30 September 2014.[36] Beta 3 commenced on 27 October 2014.[37]

On 14 November 2014, one month before launch, David Braben announced the removal of the game's offline single player mode, the developers having decided that they could not deliver an acceptable offline-only experience based on the original design.[38][39]

The Windows version of the game was released on the 16 December 2014.[1]


Reception

Elite: Dangerous received an aggregated score of 81.62% on GameRankings based on 8 reviews[41] and 82/100 on Metacritic based on 12 reviews.[40]

Chris Thursten of PC Gamer rated the game 86/100, considering it to be "potentially a classic", depending on Frontier's ability to build on the "broad but somewhat shallow foundations" of the released version. Thursten described the gameplay experience as "exhilarating excitement, matched by nothing else this year, contrasted with moments of emptiness, frustration, and boredom".[43] Dan Whitehead of Eurogamer gave the game 8/10 and considered it to be "probably the most immersive and compelling recreation of deep space ever seen in gaming".[42] Andy Kelly of GamesRadar gave the game 4/5, calling it a "compelling space sandbox" and a "welcome return" of the Elite franchise, but felt that the game at launch was "missing a lot of important features, especially when it comes to multiplayer".[44]

Removal of the offline mode

The announcement of the removal of the offline mode on 14 November 2014 was met by a significant number of complaints from customers, many saying they had backed the game on the understanding that it would feature offline play and others that there had been no prior warning of removal during the whole of the proceeding development period.[38][45]

Frontier offered refunds to disappointed customers who had pre-ordered the game without playing it,[46] and said that those who had already played the game, in alpha or beta form, would not be eligible for refunds.[47][48] Later, Braben speaking for the company announced[46] that refunds would be judged on a "case-by-case" basis.[49][50]

Frustration over the perceived reluctance of Frontier Developments to willingly issue refunds led to the creation of an online text game Refund Quest,[51][52] a parody of the company's refund process.

Early server problems

Two weeks after the relatively smooth launch, problems were encountered by what Frontier called a "relatively small" number of players.[53][54] These had a major impact on most key gameplay mechanics, with problems including multiple server disconnections, entire cargos being lost, large amounts of money being deleted, goods unable to be sold, scans not functioning, ship customisations and upgrades being deleted, and missing recently purchased ships.[53]

Future updates

A native Mac OS X version is planned for release in early 2015, three months after the initial PC version launch.[55] Although there are no plans for a Linux version of the game, Braben has stated, "There is no reason why COBRA cannot run on Linux, running through OpenGL.[56] Asked about the possibility of a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One release, Braben said that Frontier Developments "would be stupid not to support other platforms, including console."[57]

Planned updates to gameplay include seamless planetary landing, and first person perspective[4][58] exploration/combat.[4] Multi-crew ships, the ability to board and steal vessels, space-walking and additional interactions with both player and NPCs inside ships[59] and space stations,[60] have been mentioned by the developers as desirable.[60][61][62]

Braben has said that Thargoids, the warlike, insectoid aliens from the original game, would make an appearance in some capacity.[63][needs update]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c "Elite: Dangerous release date set for next month". PC Gamer. 7 November 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
  2. ^ "Frontier Developments". Frontier.co.uk. Retrieved 21 September 2014.
  3. ^ a b Royce, Brianna (16 December 2014). "Elite: Dangerous' launch-day roundup". Joystick. Retrieved 17 December 2014.
  4. ^ a b c PC Games (18 August 2014). "Elite: Dangerous | Gameplay + David Braben interview". YouTube. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  5. ^ a b "Elite: Dangerous Gameplay Demo - IGN Live: Gamescom 2014 - Sequel".
  6. ^ "Elite: Dangerous: the David Braben interview". 26 September 2014. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
  7. ^ "Fiction Diary #5".
  8. ^ a b Cook, Dave (23 November 2012). "Elite Dangerous: Braben's square peg". VG247. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  9. ^ "Elite: Dangerous Newsletter #36". Frontier Developments. 15 August 2014. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  10. ^ "GameStar - Elite: Dangerous - Gameplay + David Braben interview - 1:1 scale".
  11. ^ a b Parkin, Simon (9 July 2014). "The Video Game That Maps the Galaxy". The New Yorker. Retrieved 10 July 2014.
  12. ^ Braben, David (2011). "Classic game postmortem". GDC Vault. Retrieved 9 November 2011.
  13. ^ "David Braben: Publisher model prevented development of new Elite". incgamers.com. 20 December 2012.
  14. ^ "BAFTA Games Question Time: Crowdfunding". 16 April 2012. Retrieved 20 July 2014.
  15. ^ "Kickstarter in the UK". 10 October 2012.
  16. ^ a b Cellan-Jones, Rory (6 November 2012). "Elite reborn". BBC News. BBC. Retrieved 6 November 2012.
  17. ^ Makuch, Eddie (6 November 2012). "Elite returns on Kickstarter". Gamespot. Retrieved 8 July 2014.
  18. ^ Stoke Sentinel. "David Elks: Gaming industry is worth the investment". Stoke Sentinel. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  19. ^ games.on.net. "Elite rights now with David Braben, Frontier Developments shares up for grabs". games.on.net. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  20. ^ "Cobra game engine". forums.frontier.co.uk.
  21. ^ "Newsletter #17".
  22. ^ "Elite: Dangerous Alpha Phase 1.1 released today - Oculus Rift, 3D TV and Track IR support". Official Frontier Developments announcement.
  23. ^ "Elite: Dangerous Website". Retrieved 24 April 2014.
  24. ^ Purchese, Robert (12 September 2014). "Elite: Dangerous' original budget was £8m". Eurogamer. Gamer Network. Retrieved 12 September 2014.
  25. ^ IGN (15 August 2014). "Elite Dangerous Gameplay Demo - IGN Live: Gamescom 2014". YouTube. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  26. ^ "New Elite: Dangerous dev diary shows off galaxy evolution". PC Gamer. 3 December 2012. Retrieved 25 April 2014.
  27. ^ "Elite Dangerous: Im Gespräch mit David Braben - Interview-Video". Pcgames.de. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  28. ^ "Elite: Dangerous preview - chasing a deep space goldrush in Frontier's dynamic galaxy". PC Gamer. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  29. ^ "Elite: Dangerous Newsletter #28". Frontier Developments. 13 June 2014. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  30. ^ "Interview with Kate Russell". The Pod Delusion. Retrieved 21 December 2012.
  31. ^ Ivan, Tom (10 April 2014). "Elite Dangerous premium beta costs £100". CVG. Retrieved 9 July 2014.
  32. ^ Phillips, Tom (12 December 2013). "Elite: Dangerous combat now playable if you're a £200 alpha backer". Eurogamer. Retrieved 8 July 2014.
  33. ^ "Elite: Dangerous Alpha Testing 2 Underway". MMO Attack. 16 May 2014. Retrieved 20 May 2014.
  34. ^ "Elite: Dangerous "Premium Beta" now available at a $150 price tag". PC Gamer. 30 May 2014. Retrieved 20 June 2014.
  35. ^ "Elite: Dangerous Beta 1 Released". Frontier Developments. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  36. ^ Connor Sheridan (19 September 2014). "Elite Dangerous Beta 2 arrives on Sept. 30". CVG. Retrieved 19 September 2014.
  37. ^ Andy Chalk (27 October 2014). "Elite: Dangerous beta 3.0 goes live today". PCGamer. Retrieved 14 November 2014.
  38. ^ a b "Elite: Dangerous enrages its players and backers with the elimination of offline play". Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  39. ^ "Elite: Dangerous single-player offline mode officially ditched". Hexus.net. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  40. ^ a b "Elite: Dangerous for PC Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  41. ^ a b "Elite: Dangerous". GameRankings. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  42. ^ a b "Eurogamer review". Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  43. ^ a b Thursten, Chris (23 December 2014). "Elite: Dangerous review". PC Gamer. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  44. ^ a b Kelly, Andy (18 December 2014). "Elite: Dangerous review". GamesRadar. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  45. ^ "Elite fans protest over losing offline mode". Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  46. ^ a b "Elite: Dangerous, David Braben and a scale model Cobra MK III". Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 21 December 2014.
  47. ^ "Elite: Dangerous Creator Reassessing Refund Refusal". gamespot.com. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  48. ^ "Online-Only Elite: Dangerous Sparks Refund Backlash". gamespot.com. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  49. ^ "Frontier Developments Details Who Can Get a Refund for 'Elite Dangerous'". GamePolitics.com.
  50. ^ Grayson, Nathan (9 December 2014). "Despite Player Outcry, Elite: Dangerous Will Remain Always Online". Kotaku. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  51. ^ "Frustration with Elite:Dangerous boils over into 'Refund Quest' >> You are trying to secure a refund from an unscrupulous developer". http://www.theregister.co.uk/. The Register. Retrieved 23 December 2014. {{cite web}}: External link in |website= (help)
  52. ^ "Refund Quest".
  53. ^ a b "Elite: Dangerous server goes haywire, creates instant billionaires". Massively. Retrieved 4 January 2015.
  54. ^ "Elite Dangerous Servers Hit by Variety of Errors and Bugs". segmentnext.com. Retrieved 3 January 2015.
  55. ^ "Elite: Dangerous Newsletter #25 - Mostly Harmless Questions". Frontier Developments. 6 June 2014. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
  56. ^ "Interview: David Braben, Elite". Tux Radar. 20 January 2014. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
  57. ^ Yin-Poole, Wesley (14 July 2014). "How about Elite: Dangerous on PS4 and Xbox One?". Eurogamer. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
  58. ^ "Live Chat: Elite brains David Braben OBE answers YOUR Qs". The Register. 13 June 2013. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  59. ^ GameCentral (19 June 2014). "Elite: Dangerous hands-on preview and interview – 'the nearest game to Elite is GTA' | Metro News". Metro.co.uk. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  60. ^ a b "Frontier Developments' Elite: Dangerous – the rebirth of a legend | Features". Edge Online. 10 March 2014. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  61. ^ IGN (15 August 2014). "Elite Dangerous Gameplay Demo - IGN Live: Gamescom 2014". YouTube. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  62. ^ GameSpot (12 June 2014). "Elite: Dangerous Stage Demo - E3 2014". YouTube. Retrieved 21 August 2014.
  63. ^ "Elite: Dangerous will have 100 billion star systems, plus Thargoids — Braben reveals what's next". pcgamesn.com. Retrieved 10 January 2013.

Further reading

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elite_Dangerous&oldid=640991132"