The space sandbox Elite: Dangerous is set to receive a huge update, but probably not until 2020. Fans are concerned that not much new will happen before then.
Last year, the developers at Frontier Development hinted that they were planning something big for the space sandbox Elite: Dangerous. Now, more is known. In a forum post, the developers revealed the rough content plans for the next two years.
Something big is coming at the end of 2020
These are the developers’ plans: However, those who expected a giant update soon will have to be patient. The developers want to take their time and have assigned a large part of the team to the update, which will likely be released at the end of 2020.
To realize the ambitions of this update and the scope and scale of the planned content for Elite: Dangerous, we expect that this major milestone will only be completed in the later half of 2020.
The update is expected to be substantial. According to the developers, it will be the update with the greatest impact on the game to date. What exactly is planned has not yet been revealed, but there should be roadmaps and news about it later this year.
The new content is expected to be paid and included in the lifetime pass.
“Space Legs” or planet landing?
These are the community’s speculations: Since the developers have hardly released any information and are assuming almost 2 years of development time, fans are speculating accordingly:
- Some hope for a long-planned feature known in the community as “Space Legs”. This would be a function allowing players to move freely as pilots on foot inside the ship and on stations and planets.
- Fans think it would also be cool to land on planets with the spaceship instead of just using the existing landing vehicles.
- Others speculate about an expansion of personal super-ships for guilds and self-built space stations.
All these changes have fans hoping that Elite: Dangerous can seriously compete with the major rival Star Citizen, which also aims to introduce all those features.
Fans fear content drought until 2020
As great as the giant update for 2020 sounds as an idea, players are concerned about the here and now. According to the developers, only a small team is working on new updates for 2019 and the first half of 2020.
According to many fans’ concerns, they are unlikely to release large content but rather Quality-of-Life features and small updates.
This is what the developers say: According to the developers, they plan to release roughly every three to four months, and these updates will not be as large as the past Beyond updates from 2018. However, they plan to significantly revamp the event system.
Whether this will be enough to keep players entertained for almost two years remains to be seen.
