Thargoid War: The Beginning of the End!

[Shabine]

If that were true then why dont you and your friends and everyone stop fighting the war?

Because I like shooting Thargoids.

you say "nothing" then why are the thargoids able to destroy systems and move to the next one?

Because Frontier makes that happen.

When they destroy the system that system is completely obliterated with no one in it. We have to bring people back into the systems and help with missions from other systems to that system to turn the lights back on and help it get rebuilt.

Yeah, and that's something Frontier gave us to do. It's a task to complete.

You cant land at any star bases or planet bases. So don't tell me that players do not effect the story or outcome of the things in the game.

They don't. At all. It can just be completely ignored and it wouldn't actually affect any of the game's core loops or opportunities. Every important system is untouched. You can trade, explore, PvP, mine, whatever, and the Thargoids are little more than an occasional inconvenience if you don't like fighting them. When they attack a system, the game even moves our carriers for us because Elite players are so averse to loss that such a mechanic is absolutely mandatory.

This game isn't like EVE. In that game, I can literally lose everything because other players take my home and lock me out. The corporations and alliances determine everything from where you can go to what you can do there. That is players actually affecting the narrative of the game. Here, Frontier just gives us stuff to do, and we don't even need to interact with a single other player in order to do any of it.

This isn't meant to upset you or provoke a fight. It's just a fact that pretty much everything here is an illusion disguised as something legitimately reactive.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

and tight lipped about anything after update 16

Just like they were tight lipped about anything after update 9 until shortly before update 9 released. And yet here we are waiting for 15 and 16. We spent two years between Beyond ending and mid-2020 without knowing Odyssey's name and with minimal public evidence that they hadn't just quietly given up on it (there was plenty of forum speculation at the time that they had and "4.0" would never be released, of course). By now, "Frontier won't say anything about their plans >6 months away and their project management is shaky enough that it'd be inaccurate if they did" doesn't count as evidence for anything much.

I think there's two major issues with your theory:

1) If Frontier had an intent to shut the game down in the next (say) 2 years, there'd be very little point in them investing in any of this at all - or even doing things like console account transfers, live/legacy split, etc. which is just a bunch more admin and controversy for no real gain in that scenario. They've spoken repeatedly - both in the press and in announcements to us - of how moving to 4.0 makes future development easier, which is completely irrelevant if there isn't going to be any.

At the moment, according to their financial reports, it brings in a couple of million pounds of profit each year (about six million in gross income), which shutting it down would give up on. Sure, over a longer timescale that's likely to fall off - they're probably not expecting it to last another 10 years, for example, though even then it depends how much a pure maintenance service with no development would cost them - but right now it'd be an odd decision to make.

2) The Thargoids can capture at best 40 human systems a week on average, in the complete absence of opposition, under the current rules. That will take over a decade to wipe out the bubble, and there is opposition and there are reasons they can't always go that fast in practice, so it'd probably be more like 20 years. It's not a meaningful possibility at this stage - obviously Frontier could at some point change the rules to let them go faster and force a human defeat in a shorter timescale, but there's nothing that seems to point to them doing that this year as opposed to in five years time.

If they'd wanted a "Thargoids invade, everyone dies" scenario to end ED with, then the pre-U14 game already had the tools to do that. It wouldn't have been quite as flashy, but it would have been a lot cheaper and simpler. Similarly, why bother with all the rebalancing and tweaking (which, ultimately, has been worth +/- 1 or 2 systems defended a week, completely irrelevant to the big picture) if it's not going to make any difference in the medium term anyway?

 

[Shabine]

If they'd wanted a "Thargoids invade, everyone dies" scenario to end ED with, then the pre-U14 game already had the tools to do that. It wouldn't have been quite as flashy, but it would have been a lot cheaper and simpler. Similarly, why bother with all the rebalancing and tweaking (which, ultimately, has been worth +/- 1 or 2 systems defended a week, completely irrelevant to the big picture) if it's not going to make any difference in the medium term anyway?

"Here's that big thing we've been working towards and spending all this money on to keep the profits rolling in. Enjoy it for a year or something until we end the game by killing you all. Nothing you did matters. Bwahahaha! Goodbye! Also, please buy our new Dinosaur Roller Coaster City Builder Tycoon game. Ok, goodbye for real this time."

I don't buy it. Although I will say, that would be a very metal, grimdark, expectation-subverting end to it all. If that did happen, a part of me would admire the massive balls it would take to just snuff out the title like that. It would be the equivalent of burning down the building that all the good guys got brutally murdered in at the end of the movie.

 

[Seljdon]

"Here's that big thing we've been working towards and spending all this money on to keep the profits rolling in. Enjoy it for a year or something until we end the game by killing you all. Nothing you did matters. Bwahahaha! Goodbye! Also, please buy our new Dinosaur Roller Coaster City Builder Tycoon game. Ok, goodbye for real this time."

I don't buy it. Although I will say, that would be a very metal, grimdark, expectation-subverting end to it all. If that did happen, a part of me would admire the massive balls it would take to just snuff out the title like that. It would be the equivalent of burning down the building that all the good guys got brutally murdered in at the end of the movie.

Sure however all of those things i mentioned are the exact signs that a game is going to be turned off soon. Could be a year or two or less.

 

[Shabine]

Could be a year or two or less.

Maybe. I suppose we'll know in a year or two or less.

Was that the point of all this? Because in a year or two or less, I predict that one of two things will be happening.

1. We'll all still be here, posting in doom threads, reading about people's adventures, and arguing about what motivates gankers.
2. We'll all have succumbed to the cordyceps and we'll be wandering around our houses looking for things to shoot our spores at.

 

[Rat Catcher]

sales for ARX are down

Source?

people are playing at around 2,000 to 5,000 (average) a day or week or whatever,

Steam charts, again?

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I don't buy it. Although I will say, that would be a very metal, grimdark, expectation-subverting end to it all. If that did happen, a part of me would admire the massive balls it would take to just snuff out the title like that. It would be the equivalent of burning down the building that all the good guys got brutally murdered in at the end of the movie.

It wouldn't at all surprise me if when it does come to be time to turn the servers off, there's some final event to end on a cliffhanger, to encourage people to start asking for a sequel sooner.

It's going to get tiring if absolutely everything exciting in the plot gets assumed to be "and then everyone dies", though.

 

[Druktar]

Sure however all of those things i mentioned are the exact signs that a game is going to be turned off soon. Could be a year or two or less.

You my friend have a broad definition of "soon". ;-)

Anyway: Might be that the game will "end" this way or not. I doubt it since so far the major story of Elite was only influenced by players on a very small level. Yes we had a hand in the elections and like that, but the story itself wasnt really altered nor did we get major changes regarding features / gameplay.

Another example was missing out on certain goals creating a famine here and there. Yay thats some impact.

Quite often the story moves at the pace of a melting glacier and its even hard to tell if it got influenced at all.

 

[Shabine]

It wouldn't at all surprise me if when it does come to be time to turn the servers off, there's some final event to end on a cliffhanger, to encourage people to start asking for a sequel sooner.

I wonder if Frontier would even make a sequel to this game. If they ever intended to, and if development hasn't somehow started already, we're looking at a very distant horizon for delivery. ED contains all the elements of a project that was intended to continue evolving over a long period of time as opposed to being the first in a sequence of games, and I'm not sure what ED 2 could actually offer that ED currently doesn't.

Like, would we get the same galaxy that we never explored more than 0.5% of? Would we have Thargoids again, or would they bring back all the weird humanoid races from the old lore? Would the Asp Scout still be an absolutely terrible ship? All interesting questions.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

If they ever intended to, and if development hasn't somehow started already, we're looking at a very distant horizon for delivery.

There was a 17 year gap between FFE and ED (and 8 years between Elite and FE2, for that matter), and I wouldn't be expecting any less than 10 years between ED closing and Elite 5 releasing for much the reasons you say - while ED is running it's always going to make more sense to build on that rather than start over; if it shuts down due to lack of players, that's probably not a good time to release a sequel. At some point the "Elite 5 when?" questions plus no-one else building anything sufficiently similar are going to convince them it's time to dig that dusty old IP out for another run, at which point it won't really matter if it doesn't do anything much that ED didn't.

 

[Rat Catcher]

At some point the "Elite 5 when?" questions plus no-one else building anything sufficiently similar are going to convince them it's time to dig that dusty old IP out for another run, at which point it won't really matter if it doesn't do anything much that ED didn't.

That question is asked even now, by some...

Although, going by the 'usual' forum standards, there are some who would have Frontier pass the franchise onto a studio that uses Unreal Engine - because it could work on all platforms, of course - rather than continue to develop it in-house.

I don't see Frontier taking another bite of the cherry when it comes to space games, but am open to being proven wrong.

 

[IstvaanDCIV]

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.

There is almost certainly video evidence of this statement, the fact it was made on Twitch makes no difference. Assuming of course that this statement was in fact made, you should at the bare minimum be able to provide the name of the stream, as well as a timestamp for when exactly.

 

[zimms]

I wonder if Frontier would even make a sequel to this game. If they ever intended to, and if development hasn't somehow started already, we're looking at a very distant horizon for delivery. ED contains all the elements of a project that was intended to continue evolving over a long period of time as opposed to being the first in a sequence of games, and I'm not sure what ED 2 could actually offer that ED currently doesn't.

Like, would we get the same galaxy that we never explored more than 0.5% of? Would we have Thargoids again, or would they bring back all the weird humanoid races from the old lore? Would the Asp Scout still be an absolutely terrible ship? All interesting questions.

I don't think an ED2 is in the cards anytime soon either.

In theory Frontier could continue to work on ED almost indefinitely. The only real benefit of an ED2 would be having a clean slate and getting rid of some dead weight, playerbase included.
With a new game, it's easier to make a huge jump concerning hardware requirements, and nobody could complain that their assets were taken away from them, or their ships/engineered modules nerfed.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

There is almost certainly video evidence of this statement, the fact it was made on Twitch makes no difference. Assuming of course that this statement was in fact made, you should at the bare minimum be able to provide the name of the stream, as well as a timestamp for when exactly.

The statement "they saw a dip in revenue after Odyssey" is confirmable from their more recent financial reports, no need to dig through twitch.

https://frontier-drupal.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/production/frontier-corp/s3fs-public/Frontier_FY23_Interim_Results_presentation.pdf

Slide 4 is revenue, there's no scale provided but you can work out what it is from other text in the document.
- in 2022 (last 12 months), ED brought in about 6 million in revenue
- in the 12 months prior to Odyssey, more like 10 million.

The first five months after Odyssey's release saw a very low rate of monthly revenue; it has picked up again since then and been fairly consistent month-on-month.

Slide 5 is profit, where you can see that after that five-month dip, ED recovered to continue making a small monthly profit (after paying for the current development costs). Again the graph doesn't have a marked scale, the scale can be deduced from the rest of the document, it's about 2 million a year profit for 2022.

So, yes, they saw a dip in revenue after Odyssey's release; they saw a rise in revenue again after fixing the worst of the issues.

Revenue probably hasn't risen to the point where they could be confident in doing another Odyssey-sized payable DLC, but equally it seems pretty stable for continuing on the current path and hoping things recover.

 

[Keloot]

This is a theory that has been peddled endlessly in youtube comments over the past few months, along with the usual 'only 100 people are still playing' comments from people who 'left to play SC five years ago' but somehow still manage to comment on every single ED video they can find.

If there's going to be a planned shutdown the first hint would be the closing of the arx store, because selling in-game currency to people for a game you're going to shutter would be very, very bad.

But that's logical, and most of the 'dead gaem' comments don't employ a whole lot of that.

can people even play sc?? the update they just did destroyed the servers and barly anyone logs in .

 

[Shabine]

can people even play sc?? the update they just did destroyed the servers and barly anyone logs in .

As someone who has joined that "project" from time to time, I can tell you that nobody plays Star Citizen. You suffer Star Citizen for brief periods of time between not suffering it.

The last time I was in it, my friend Bob and I both got noodle legs, became trapped inside some stairs, and had our cargo fall through the floor of our ship during a takeoff that ended with us getting disconnected and dying.

10/10. Would die impoverished in a puddle of my own legs again.

 

[metatheurgist]

can people even play sc?? the update they just did destroyed the servers and barly anyone logs in .

Apparently the trick to login is to sell all your ships first. Imagine if ED had a bug like that. Frontier's offices would be en fuego. At CIGland they try to smother the flames with more donations.

 

[Seljdon]

There is almost certainly video evidence of this statement, the fact it was made on Twitch makes no difference. Assuming of course that this statement was in fact made, you should at the bare minimum be able to provide the name of the stream, as well as a timestamp for when exactly.

Elite:dangerous its obvious thats their channel on twitch and no there is no video. The videos on twitch expire.

 

[Keloot]

Apparently the trick to login is to sell all your ships first. Imagine if ED had a bug like that. Frontier's offices would be en fuego. At CIGland they try to smother the flames with more donations.

i have 39 ships in elite .. how many would i need to delete them to enter sc?? lol

 

[IstvaanDCIV]

Elite:dangerous its obvious thats their channel on twitch and no there is no video. The videos on twitch expire.

They have a YouTube channel to which they upload their streams, plus there's people making their own clips and uploading them. It's very bad form to make claims and then insist that the evidence for said claims cannot be found. How can the rest of us verify such claims? Thankfully @Ian Doncaster has provided much more detail in a post above, and the situation in fact looks a bit different to how you've presented it.