If you extrapolate after excluding the first day's surge, it's not encouraging. There would need to be some sort of rush of pledges. I suspect that the first £300,000 or so was from all the die-hards who've been keeping their Elite candle lit for the last couple of decades. Perhaps they'll pledge more later if it looks like failing.

That might be Elite: Dangerous' only hope of success. The marketing so far seems to be targeted at people who knew Elite already. Those people were already mentally invested. Unless Frontier have some extra card up their sleeve (and I can't imagine why they wouldn't have played that card already) then I don't think what's there will be enough to show a newcomer why they should invest in this game.

@Loki999

Newtonian physics have been confirmed. I'll get back to you about local systems!

@Brianetta

It is extremely common for Kickstarter campaigns to take a 'basin' shape, in fact it is the most common trend. Whilst we would love to reach our target well in advance of the Kickstarter deadline, we're still confident that enough people will show their support for Elite:Dangerous and pledge in time. It is completely normal for pledges to drop off in the middle of a Kickstarter (especially one as long as ours) and then pick up again close to the end. So keep the faith and pledge if you haven't already!

Dear FrontierAshley,

what are you dreaming of at night ?

There are already pledgers who have withdrawn. What you say about the campaign is going sounds abit like a whistle in the dark.

And you can't really compare this one with the average kickstarter campaign.

It's one of the HIGHEST PLEGDES EVER.

As been said before even here : you, Frontier Games and David Braben have to SHOW MORE, much more, esp. of what the game will look like.

That's what I got told everytime I ask someone about it. "Nice idea, though it was before my time, but can't see how it will look like and be played.

I won't buy a pig in the poke."

The keyword I got everytime : "see".

Don't show only "woegs" aka interviews and talking about intention, talking about what gameply will/might be, SHOW IT.

You might have a look here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joshparnell/limit-theory-an-infinite-procedural-space-game .

This guy with his one-man-show/project shows much more about how his game will be, even if the features might be only

prototypes. But you get an idea about it, that makes someone feel confident. And then look on how HIS campaign proceeds,

even if the pledge goal is much less, but the "trends" .....

Hope you at Frontier Games got the idea behind and come up with something to tackle this.

(BTW : I PLEDGED !)

I have yet to pledge.

 There just isn't enough concrete information. I don't back portents. 😉

 The way I see it, Elite:Dangerous just doesn't exist yet and they are trying to sell the idea of that game.

 And because it doesn't exist, nothing seems to be set in stone....

 I'd love to be wrong about this..  I mirror NucNuc's sentiment:

you, Frontier Games and David Braben have to SHOW MORE, much more, esp. of what the game will look like.

  Please do.

 The demos that have been shown could have been thrown together in a matter of days.

Tom Morton the original creator of Pioneer aimed to create his game in a week originally 🙂 And he produced a playable-ish game at the end of that time.

^ What he said.

I wish the Frontier Team would take some pointer from Josh of 'Limit Theory' fame!

Also on KS!

David spent all the money he earned with Elite and return for more.       

Still, I trust him.

I have yet to pledge.

 There just isn't enough concrete information. I don't back portents. 😉

 The way I see it, Elite:Dangerous just doesn't exist yet and they are trying to sell the idea of that game.

 And because it doesn't exist, nothing seems to be set in stone....

 I'd love to be wrong about this..  I mirror NucNuc's sentiment:

 

 

 

 

  Please do.

 

 

 The demos that have been shown could have been thrown together in a matter of days.

Tom Morton the original creator of Pioneer aimed to create his game in a week originally 🙂 And he produced a playable-ish game at the end of that time.

The initial KS page was pretty poor. But with the updates DB is actually showing more than probably Star Citizen. Of course that Elite:Dangerous doesn't exist yet - doing a Captain Obvious, if it did, it wouldn't be on Kickstarter. Another thing to consider is that there is no point in having a design forum and being a part of it as a pledge, if all the design decisions are already taken.

Selling a project is selling a vision, not showing preliminary demos - it will be probably be more effective to have a bunch of pretty prededered images and video edited models than a fully working - but ugly - playable-ish game. Specially when certain innovative features are quite hard to implement rapidly (e.g. evolving environment and players having impact on the game world). And, to be honest, the multiplayer video was actually quite interesting and a proof that it is not just an idea.

Compare and contrast the Elite: Dangerous kickstarter with Uber Entertainment's Planetary Annihilation. That was Kickstarter done right, and they sailed past even their stretch goals. The video was there from day 1, as were the screenshots and justifications further down. All of the shots and video were mock-ups, and they were up front about that. They introduced their team, they stated their ambitions, showed what the gameplay would look like and even declared which features they'd aim for at different levels of funding.

It was awesome to see.

I couldn't agree more with Brianetta!!

Kickstarter is littered with examples of doing the campaign right.

 Of course that Elite:Dangerous doesn't exist yet - doing a Captain Obvious, if it did, it wouldn't be on Kickstarter.

 Yes obviously the game proper does not exist. However as Brianetta has shown, there should at least be some extensive design work done in that area.

 But I should have been more specific 🙂

 You see, if I pledge, I'm likely to pledge a nice amount. So I just want to hold off to ensure this is the game I'm hoping it will be as I'm not a fan of modern techniques of "streamlining" features. I'm a jaded gamer 😉

I really hope they pull this off, and it doesn't get too streamlined. I like eyecandy but I like gameplay more.

Of course I pledged! It's one of the most exciting spacegame projects ever. Shouldn't every selfrespecting spacesimfan (and especially Pioneer player) be supporting Elite IV? If not with money, then at least with kind words. I'm surprised at the negativity by some people here.

 

Does this mean a seamless galaxy? By that I mean is it possible to fly from one solar system to another using regular engines/thrusters?

I've only heard of this being done once before, in Artlav's game "Spaceway". It's something I'd love to see in Elite 4 🙂

Hi s20dan, long time no see! You should try building a spaceship in Shores of Hazeron. You can actually fly from starsystem to starsystem realtime without jumpgates. When you advance in technology, you can research and build wormholedrives and later on warpdrives. You do get loadingtimes when you're halfway between 2 starsystems though but the stars you see around you are actually the stars you can travel to on impulse or warp. A star can be selected on the starmap and when you look out the window of your spaceship, a crosshair will appear on that particular star with an ETA on your navigation computer.

Of course I pledged! It's one of the most exciting spacegame projects ever. Shouldn't every selfrespecting spacesimfan (and especially Pioneer player) be supporting Elite IV? If not with money, then at least with kind words. I'm surprised at the negativity by some people here.

The negativity isn't toward the game, or even the company. It's toward the Kickstarter project. It's mostly borne of frustration.

I suspect, frankly, that it's a frustration shared by the staff at Frontier. They can't possibly afford to show pessimism in public, but I'd imagine that there's been some internal discussion on how it has been presented so far, and how that can be improved in the last four weeks - and whether it'll make the required impact.

I got this impression from Braben's responses during Gary Whitta's interview.

Hi s20dan, long time no see! You should try building a spaceship in Shores of Hazeron. You can actually fly from starsystem to starsystem realtime without jumpgates. When you advance in technology, you can research and build wormholedrives and later on warpdrives. You do get loadingtimes when you're halfway between 2 starsystems though but the stars you see around you are actually the stars you can travel to on impulse or warp. A star can be selected on the starmap and when you look out the window of your spaceship, a crosshair will appear on that particular star with an ETA on your navigation computer.

 Hi Kinghaggis 🙂 Good to see you again! Oh how could I forget about Shores of Hazeron hehe, I have actualy played that.

 It certainly is close to seamless in a sense.

 When I played I got steamrolled by some aspiring Emperor; they destroyed all my military equipment and gave me the choice of "Join or Die!"

 So I joined up with them, stole their technology and flew as far away as I could 🙂

 There was no warp drive back when I played though, but you could still travel between systems wthout the wormholes, it just took forever.

Nice trick! 

There was a big galactic war in Hazeron a few weeks ago. A Federation of Empires went head to head with the 3 biggest dominating Empires in a war that lasted 3 days. I'm playing the game with a friend and we're at Tech Level 25 now. When the war broke loose, we were nowhere near prepared to defend ourselves and we still aren't. It's a hard game and it takes ages to accomplish something. Fortunately the war passed by and nobody has harassed us. We still haven't made contact with other empires but we'd better be prepared when we do. 😎

Back to Elite IV, there's a dev update showing new gameplay footage!!

Much better!

What I really liked about the video is the rhythm of the gameplay. In some games (e.g. X series) flying is "slow".

Great work!

harrg planets seem be plaqued on an skybox !!

If it is, I very much doubt it will stay that way. Bear in mind that you're seeing pre-production footage. Frontier Developments don't have their funding from Kickstarter yet, and what they have has been knocked together in spare work time ("skunk works" style). They're not selling a game, they're asking for funding to start working on a game.

Then again, it might actually be a full-sized planet, in which case it might very well look like a backdrop. Planets are not small, they are far away. To paraphrase Father Ted.

The dev' diary updates are winning me over 🙂

The dev' diary updates are winning me over 🙂

And quite some other people... just 22 special priced digital editions left (out of the 10k).

Update: no more cheap digital editions available 🙂

The dev' diary updates are winning me over 🙂

Good boy!

And quite some other people... just 22 special priced digital editions left (out of the 10k).

 

 

Update: no more cheap digital editions available 🙂

It's ok, there's still 8319 of the £40 level available! Hmmm, tempting.

The physics look like fighter planes in space to me. If you replaced the Anacondas with zeppelins and the Vipers with Sopwith Camels the action would seem just as plausible. I hope that will be improved as they move along. I don't know if people will be able to mod this game, but it could be cool to make a pure exploration mode with no hostile ships around to distract you. It would be called...Elite Harmless!

You will be able to land on planets but not in the initial version.

That's a bit disappointing for me personally, the screenshots you see in Pioneer are consistently about the planets!

I am with you on this fluffy, planetary landings is what the last two Elite games were about, but I guess, the level of detail and interaction that David wants to put in, would cause too much of a delay for the game's initial release. He said it's coming later with placeholders in use until it's ready