Okay guys, I have read several of your replies, first off I am not apart of any doom crowd. I don't even know what you're talking about with that. My friends and I discussion comes from several factors. Consider?:
1) David Braben stepped down from his position and put someone else in it. It is "unknown" officially why. There have been comments from him and a few people who work there. The last time I saw anything like this happen in a business or even in politics. It was done to save something. Kinda like, "we're going to shut this down, or you gotta step down." was the only way to keep the lights on for said whatever it was in those scenarios. This could suggest that since David has stated a few times that Elite: Dangerous is his baby that he worked out some kind of a deal to steer the game development into a way that it will keep the lights on for a certain amount of more time. This of course is assuming that this is the kind of thing that happened at Frontier with his stepping down.
2) Elite: Dangerous Odyssey, it didn't make as much money as they wanted, sales for ARX are down, people are playing at around 2,000 to 5,000 (average) a day or week or whatever, usually best around updates. This it drops quite heavily back to around these numbers. This game is not pulling in as much money as it may take to develop it and or to maintain the staff paychecks for this game. How do I know this? They stated it in one of their lives. There is no video because it was on twitch that I saw it. It was a passing statement. The statement was that after Odyssey launched they saw a dip in revenue, quite a substantial one.
3) There are a few tabloid articles online that speak about the first two things I have written even stating that when they question the studio directly the only answer they get is that "there will be an update 15 and 16" and nothing more. That in the past they would state that the game is planned for many more years to come and to keep an eye on future press announcements along with update information that they would share. Now they are tight lipped about anything after update 16. All the information for these people writing the articles seems to suggest for them that the games story will be coming to a close sooner rather than later.
4) Frontier has always, or mainly at least, made the story determined by the players. This "war" is a "annihilation" kind of war. Which means if you and I do not step up and play it, they WILL wipe everything out. The game factions obviously aren't going to sit there and just be stationary, the game reacts in the coding to certain variables to what our actions are as a collective. And pumps out those galnet articles as certain parameters are checked. Thus we inadvertently "choose" the story via the progress. If you remember at the beginning of this war the thargoids made MASSIVE amounts of push into the bubble. It wasn't until 100s and maybe a 1000ish (players) people started fighting back that it seems to be holding, however they are still pushing forward, albeit slowly. So what happens if we just stop fighting back? lets test it and see??? What happens if the bubble is consumed? This is an honest question, where are you and I going to be able to refuel, repaid, get missions, sell things, etc? You think that we can all go to Colonia and make that the new bubble? sure, the lag will be hell on a stick though. So the only reasonable option is, if we do not win this the factions will spread into space most likely to those those locked off small clusters of space around the galaxy. Maybe we will lose some factions, I don't know.
5) Updates, I read on here several people say this game gets "constant regular updates". I don't know how new or old you are to this game if you believe this but this isn't true. I started playing this game in October 2015, pre-purchased horizons. Horizons was marketed as a year of expansions. Do you know how long it took in reality? We got updates every 3 to 9 months (game updates, not information from the devs) that is NOT "constant regular updates". Constant regular updates would be weekly or bi-weekly. NOT months apart. it took two and half years (roughly) to get all of horizons done. As a result frontier gave us all the next update Elite Dangerous: Beyond (which was story based) for free to say sorry, and they even said it directly that is why Beyond was free to us all. Then they gave up Azumuth (spelling isn't right sorry) for free as well, and then they did Odyssey. They still followed the same formula of roughly every 6 months an update (on average). If you go through the list of updates for this game from the beginning until now, since odyssey the amount of what they actually "fix" and do in the game has drastically dwindled in how much each patch contains. This is ANOTHER good indicator that they are slowing down on this and probably going to put it on the chopping block soon (at the end of update 16???). They cut support for the console as well. Yes yes they have offered solutions of people transferring to the pc version of the game and you could say if they were going to shut down why would they do this? Well could be that David Braben stepping down gave us more time to the play the game? he cares about this game. And the plan may be for update 16, it could be a waiting period of time to see if sales goes back up. We may get ONE MORE expansion and if that tanks then they close the game, just saying.
6) The point with all of this is it seems like there was something in real life that was adverted for Elite: Dangerous with David Braben stepping into a different role and publishing someone else to his old position. And further the information that they have shared with tabloid interviews and tight lipped about anything after update 16 and how they communicate to these interviewers is suspect to nearly anyone in that gaming magazine/ interview community. Along with this is a move to wipe out the bubble, what happens if we do nothing? IT WILL be wiped out UNLESS the guardians some how come back or some new alien human favoring faction shows up to help us. if not, better buy a fleet carrier, oh wait how are you going to maintain that with no way to pay for it if your credits expire when there may not be any way to get credits anymore? Also with the harsh dip in the amount of money this game was making, other MMO and MMO type games have been sold for making more than this and it was considered a failure in terms of sales for the company that sold the product. Or they shut the game down. Never instantly, always gave 3 to 6 months in those cases. Rarely have I ever heard of a business pulling the plug overnight.
These points considered is why my friends and I have thought this way. Am I a doom sayer? What the hell is that??? Like seriously, look at the facts people. What do you see?
