Lower your Expectations for ED

[Ian Doncaster]

Using the dreaded Steam charts (which is the only semi-reliable source of player involvement publicly available) suggests that nothing post Odyssey has really had that much effect.

Sure, because the pre-Odyssey peak was so big by comparison that everything after that looks flat - and obviously it's not going to get back up there in any hurry. Set the graph to start in August 2021 (for the post-disaster view) and U14 seems to have done reasonably well in that context, though: a decent-sized jump up above the baseline level in the short-term, and the new baseline level it's at now is a little bit higher than the summer 2022 one in the longer-term.

If they can keep doing that and raising the baseline a little bit at a time, then they might one day get enough players to be able to fund something bigger again - and in the meantime, can keep being quietly profitable. Even "flat" wouldn't be bad for a 10-year old game that still brings in £2M profit a year.


(Other semi-reliable public sources like EDDN traffic or Squadron leaderboards give similar numbers and definitely similar directions - Steam charts are absolutely fine for estimating "up or down", it's when people misread "concurrent players" as "total players" that the comedy starts)

 

[GroG79]

Lower expectations?

If you have high expectations you should talk to someone about it. We know close to nothing about the update (15). Where are your expectations based on?
The only one being hyped here is you. I can not lower what I do not have.

I am content with what there is at the moment. I am looking forward to the new update. Whatever it may be. It might be that I find the update irrelevant to me. Since nothing gets removed there would logically be no impact to my experience.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Did you automate this reply for every new thread or are you still posting that manually?

I often wonder the same of others...

 

[Wobblin-Gobblin]

I see frontier as a typical British company....
• Producing stuff on a low to middle budget, and so never quite works properly.
• maintenance on an even lower budget.
• hope no one notices.
• broke

Flimley

You're talking of German car manufactors

 

[xzanfr]

I see frontier as a typical British company....
• Producing stuff on a low to middle budget, and so never quite works properly.
• maintenance on an even lower budget.
• hope no one notices.
• broke

Flimley

Hello, fellow series 3 land rover owner.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Maybe not here, but on general gaming forums, the way I learned about ED was from people complaining it had been going nowhere for years and was an inch-deep ocean of grind covering for no content and a dev team that was shared with their other games

So you thought "great, sounds like my kind of thing"?

I saw a review of Frontier Elite 2 that expressed much the same sentiment, and was hopeful that FFE would change that (oops), in around 1995. It's what the game is.

and their other games combined have trouble surpassing ED's numbers on steamcharts even in its temporarily embarrassed state.

Planet Zoo is keeping pretty good pace with ED on there on its own, looking at it now. But that's also a difference between a single-player and a MMO: if no-one plays Planet Zoo except in the months there's a new DLC out, Frontier still has all their money. If no-one plays ED for months between DLCs, Frontier sells no ARX. And: if no-one buys new ED stuff, Frontier still have to keep the servers running and staffed. If no-one buys new Planet Coaster stuff, it costs Frontier nothing.

When their other games have succeeded, they've largely reinvested that money in producing new games. A much more substantial proportion of ED's income has gone back into ED itself.

since pretty much every significant space game

Both of them? That's rather my point. ED might be selling reasonably well for a Frontier developments game, but if there was a massive untapped market for space games, there'd be rather more of them out there because people would see Frontier being successful despite the flaws you mention and do something better. "Every significant space game [1] except ED is run by a small single-game company" does not suggest there's a lot of growth potential here.

[1] Excluding Starfield, when it releases? EDIT: as Old Duck points out, Hello Games don't just make NMS. So Egosoft making just the X Series are perhaps the exception in fact.

They're running a 1% operating margin and will likely be in the red this year.

Do you have a source for that? Their H1 interim results for 2022-23 have a £7M operating profit on £57M income, and project a final profit for the full year of £2M to £10M, and I don't see anything more recent than that.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I suppose I feel honour bound to remind that some of the expectations for ED were not player created, they came straight from Frontier via the KickStarter. Take a bow ship interiors, planets with atmospheres and support for platforms other than Windows.

I suppose I feel honor bound to remind some that the Kickstarter was very clear that ship interiors, planets with atmospheres, and many other so-called "promises" were explicitly to be part of future paid expansions.

Other platforms than windows are a fair point, however.

 

[Northpin]

...much every significant space game will be beating Frontier's multi-game strategy. They're running a 1% operating margin and will likely be in the red this year.

That's really an unsubstantiated claim
It's enough to read their interim report for FY2023, covering the period June 2022 - November 2022, to see that's not the case

 

[zimms]

So you thought "great, sounds like my kind of thing"?

[...]

 

[Brrokk]

ED is nearly 10 years old (December 16, 2014). The likelihood of additional big expansions depends on the success of Odyssey. Big reworks of existing features are very unlikely except maybe exo-biology. We'd be very lucky if Fdev bothers to add atmospheric planets with forests, seas, lava lakes, clouds and ship interiors. However, most game devs would call it a day and put it in maintenance mode.

If Fdev is secretly developing an ED sequel it would take at least 3+ years. It's easier and less expensive to release graphics upgrades for ED.

I don't bother with expectations. I play ED because it's fun to play now, not for what potential it might have. Once it's no longer fun I'll choose a different game. I'm from the era when you got a floppy disc and installed it; then that was how the game would always be.

A big part of the fun for me is that I can fly the Cobra III which was only wireframe the first time; no other space game is going to be able to offer this.

 

[Old Duck]

I see frontier as a typical British company....
• Producing stuff on a low to middle budget, and so never quite works properly.
• maintenance on an even lower budget.
• hope no one notices.
• broke

Flimley

For every rule there is an exception:

"We are Hello Games, and we make games. Hello!

We’re a video game development studio and publisher based in Guildford and Cambridge in the UK, and are proudly independent. We are the creators of the multi-award winning Joe Danger games, the huge and evolving No Man’s Sky and the intimate puzzle adventure The Last Campfire and when we’re not doing that, we’re probably working on something new."

Though as I think about it, HG might follow this ruleset as well, it's just that their "low budget" work is actually pretty amazing, all things considered (and this from someone who is not a NMS fanboy). I still don't get how HG actually makes money releasing never-ending free content, but I guess they do!

 

[amigacooke]

I suppose I feel honor bound to remind some that the Kickstarter was very clear that ship interiors, planets with atmospheres, and many other so-called "promises" were explicitly to be part of future paid expansions.

Other platforms than windows are a fair point, however.

Yes indeed, but after a decade I think Frontier have had a good chance to get further along that path than they have. There is no indication from Frontier of any progress being made towards those goals.

Naturally, however, whoever remains working on ED are in a state of ever mounting excitement

 

[amigacooke]

Sure, because the pre-Odyssey peak was so big by comparison that everything after that looks flat - and obviously it's not going to get back up there in any hurry. Set the graph to start in August 2021 (for the post-disaster view) and U14 seems to have done reasonably well in that context, though: a decent-sized jump up above the baseline level in the short-term, and the new baseline level it's at now is a little bit higher than the summer 2022 one in the longer-term.

Even if the Odyssey anticipation spike is removed, what has happened since May 2021 still doesn’t look that good compared with 2015 to 2019. If the discussion is about how does Frontier generate interest and sales, why would you want to remove their most successful period ever?

The lesson to learn, surely, is investing in paid expansions is a great path to take, as long as you don’t completely ruin the product with a (insert adjective of your choice) release?

 

[amigacooke]

I don't bother with expectations. I play ED because it's fun to play now, not for what potential it might have. Once it's no longer fun I'll choose a different game. I'm from the era when you got a floppy disc and installed it; then that was how the game would always be.

A big part of the fun for me is that I can fly the Cobra III which was only wireframe the first time; no other space game is going to be able to offer this.

Which game was it that Frontier released that was unplayable until you got the patch sent to you on a floppy? I’m sure someone will remember.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Which game was it that Frontier released that was unplayable until you got the patch sent to you on a floppy? I’m sure someone will remember.

I'm guessing that would have been early releases of Frontier or FFE?

I didn't need any patch because by the time i bought them, whatever was the issue had been fixed.

But funny to think about it, if we didn't have the internet to download patches these days, then most games would be borked on release

 

[Northpin]

Even if the Odyssey anticipation spike is removed, what has happened since May 2021 still doesn’t look that good compared with 2015 to 2019.

it looks about the same if you remove the Carriers Hump and the Odyssey hype hump.

If the discussion is about how does Frontier generate interest and sales, why would you want to remove their most successful period ever?

Was it successful?
Concurrent players on steam doesnt necessarily mean sales.

And whatever copies they sold through preorders and after the launch was eaten by the 6-7 month of Crunching to fix what could be fixed.
Remember, they ended up the first 6 months of FY2022 with an operational loss of 1.3 millions then by the end of the FY2022, after cutting all the losses incurred by Odyssey, they end up with 1.5 millions operational profit.
Compare that value with almost 20 millions operational profit for FY2021

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I think one of the things that drives expectations so low, at least for those of us who have been around from the start, is how it seems to take longer and longer for FD to add less and less.

Horizons only came out with a little delay, a year or so after release, and added a good bit of content, and during that year they also added quite a bit of stuff (although some of it, PP, CQC, were highly questionable). And then Beyond, not even a DLC, took a few more years, then the biggest update in many years, Odyssey, came with a decent amount of stuff, but a whole boatload of issues. During that gap, there was new content, but it was often limited or questionable.

And since Odyssey, we've been waiting a couple of years, and apart from some new Thargoid and Odyssey stuff, limited in terms of new content, the best FD have to offer us is they are still thinking about the overhaul of an existing game feature. We don't even know if another DLC is planned.

The future doesn't exactly look optimistic. Even if they are planning another DLC, how many more years will it be before it arrives?

 

[Christopher Roberto]

So you thought "great, sounds like my kind of thing"?

I'd played all of the old games to some degree and I'd been in threads about Elite 4 so long ago that they were on USENET so I was curious, but people talking about it like it was a unique disaster was what got me really interested, like tales of grinding involving relogging to the main menu. When Timmy offered it for the low cost of all of my personal data free, how could I resist?

Planet Zoo is keeping pretty good pace with ED on there on its own, looking at it now. But that's also a difference between a single-player and a MMO: if no-one plays Planet Zoo except in the months there's a new DLC out, Frontier still has all their money. If no-one plays ED for months between DLCs, Frontier sells no ARX. And: if no-one buys new ED stuff, Frontier still have to keep the servers running and staffed. If no-one buys new Planet Coaster stuff, it costs Frontier nothing.

The server side of ED likely costs almost nothing. It was originally intended to have an offline mode so they designed it for a thin server where almost everything is client-side. I'd expect EDSM to be substantially more expensive to operate than ED.

Both of them? That's rather my point. ED might be selling reasonably well for a Frontier developments game, but if there was a massive untapped market for space games, there'd be rather more of them out there because people would see Frontier being successful despite the flaws you mention and do something better. "Every significant space game [1] except ED is run by a small single-game company" does not suggest there's a lot of growth potential here.

Everyone's waiting on Starfield, Other Game's funding keeps increasing YoY, so many people piled onto X4 that they've got the cash to maaaybe be up to something, Beyond Good and Evil 2 is.. well that was a disaster but they sure spent a lot on it, there's at least one big and popular game whose next installment will be in space and I know what it is and I'm not telling la la la, Take Two bought up KSP and made KSP 2 and.. maybe they shouldn't have, etc.. Don't discount the rush of indies to space though as indies have a shorter dev cycle and are the first to show up to a hot segment. Larger companies are trying to resurrect games with a space theme as reboots/remasters can be ready faster, like Dead Space for example (yes, EA is this desperate). It's expected that people will be increasingly interested in space as a theme as space heats up IRL.

Do you have a source for that? Their H1 interim results for 2022-23 have a £7M operating profit on £57M income, and project a final profit for the full year of £2M to £10M, and I don't see anything more recent than that.

It depends where they decide to put the costs for the new game they're working on. I'd hide it under the FY23 shell since it wouldn't hurt so FY24 would look like the beginning of a recovery leading into a release in FY25.

 

[Flimley]

For every rule there is an exception:

"We are Hello Games, and we make games. Hello!

We’re a video game development studio and publisher based in Guildford and Cambridge in the UK, and are proudly independent. We are the creators of the multi-award winning Joe Danger games, the huge and evolving No Man’s Sky and the intimate puzzle adventure The Last Campfire and when we’re not doing that, we’re probably working on something new."

Though as I think about it, HG might follow this ruleset as well, it's just that their "low budget" work is actually pretty amazing, all things considered (and this from someone who is not a NMS fanboy). I still don't get how HG actually makes money releasing never-ending free content, but I guess they do!

Agreed, that is an exception for a British company. Hello games are an excellent example of 'stepping up to the plate'.

.....Meanwhile, Frontier are still stringing out the thargoid thing. For what, 5 years now? I can't remember it's been so long, But it's only now coming to fruition.
Odyssey still appears to be the same to me, yes it runs a lot better now. Except with worse aa and trying to set my PC on fire. Sadly I see zero evidence of the turnaround in development after its disaster release. It's all just flying by the seat of its pants and under funded.
Totally given up on the feature overhaul as clearly after stating that it's now in 'investigation' mode.... the original road map was a crock off crap (and very weak to boot). Just the same as their communication, again. I been with this game for nearly ten years now and am approaching the point of supreme apathy. This will ultimately lead to ditching and going to another game.

What this game would benefit from are some minor updates every two or three months. Even if that's Just different assets to look at ! Or minor QoL improvements such as being able to load tritium into the fuel tanks of our fleet carriers without actually having to be there and loading it into a T-9 first. i mean, what's that all about!! There is specific service personnel aboard for this detail.
And talking about fleet carriers, can someone at frontier please add some different modules in the form of rooms to walk around. Or add some extra internal skins and 'things' to place around the place. You know let's have our own little sim city.

rant over
Flimley

 

[Fizzatron]

oh look, Frontier announce a live-stream that looks like it could be talking about an forthcoming update and almost right on cue, a doom thread starts to suck the air from it. How predictable.