We never really do in January. Especially this year, as they announce their half year results next week and all the fallout that goes with it.
Last time they were this quiet, they announced the cancelation of any further updates to the consoles.
Elite Dangerous plans for 2024
- Thread starter Arubeto
- Start date
Last time they were this quiet, they announced the cancelation of any further updates to the consoles.
Hopefully nothing that drastic, but I think it’ll be interesting whenever the sunset finally occurs to watch the pivot from shouting down posts with the non-rebuttal of “DOOM™” to something like “well you’ve had your money’s worth, you can’t complain” or variations on that theme.
I just hope the people at FDev aren’t up for more cuts, it seems like a bad time for the industry.
Really who cares! Someday the ride will be over, if one likes the game then play while it's possible and if not then don't.
I for one will find the day when the game gets put into maintenance mode or the servers get shut down sad and not interesting at all. Personally I plan to disappear and not to hang around here to argue about who was right or wrong about the doom...
Well said.
Everyone's value of "money's worth" differs from person to person. I can only say what I consider, and I consider myself to have had my money's worth.
Ten years of a game
I had a part to play in it existing
I was one of a few (literally) on this forum when it was announced
I have made some new friends I hope I'll stay in contact with
I still have not done even half of the things there are to do in this game
If Frontier call an end to Elite Dangerous, I'll be thanking them, and if there is no more Elite for another twenty years, I will still be lurking on this forum when there's only twelve of us again.
Not everything to do with Elite can be quantified in terms of money.
Elite is a true masterpiece during long term gaming history, therefore I think there is a chance for an offline mode or a new iteration even after that.
I looked at the old forums occasionally over the years to see if there were any Elite IV announcements and was an early KS backer once I saw it announced (Backer #2764) though only at the minimum amount once I saw it was an online-only game. Once offline was announced a few weeks later I bumped the pledge up to £90 because that’s what I considered to be “money’s worth” - I’d not be beholden to an internet link to be able to play (I was still in the Navy at the time and would spend months away from any sort of online capability).
I’ve loved most of my time in ED - especially once I got VR in 2017 - but I’ll be very sad if it disappears into the digital ether. I still enjoy playing original-flavour Elite and FE2 and I hope I’ll be donning the latest whizz-bang HMD to play ED in the future.
The point of my post though was about the defenders of Elite’s honour who so ha-ha-hilariously shout “DOOM!” in any thread they deem critical of the game - I’m sure once the game does shut up shop, then complaints will be shouted down by money-divided-by-hours/years defences. Oh, and plenty of “never used the actual word ‘promise’” regarding preserving the game for the future
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Oh, that's already started. Currently it takes the form of "well, people have been saying been saying the game is doomed forever so eventually they'll be right", since presumably not even the whitest of knights can ignore the way things are currently looking. But it's fine, because some people pointed out problems too early, or something. Neatly redirects that nagging feeling into the comforting notion that people were wrong about the servers shutting down in whatever year (not that that was ever actually the bulk of the "doom" but nevermind)
The game is already paid, with a paid DLC and microtransactions. Not sure how adding a subscription onto that would help or be justified.
Actually, I already have to pay a subscription to GeForce after Odyssey made the game unplayable on my computer. If Frontier fix that then sure, they can have that money instead.
That suggestion has of course been made many times over the last seven years at least and has been considered over that time as a good way to drive off existing players.
They make ~£6 million a year in ED income on their latest official figures - from all sources: game sales, Odyssey, ARX, etc.
That already seems fairly predictable - it really doesn't seem to change much month-on-month or year-on-year, looking at the graph they provided in the investor presentations.
The problem isn't that ED income isn't predictable, the problem is that it's predictably about half what it needs to be to sustainably fund major development.
There's two ways to solve that:
1) Get the existing players to spend twice as much each per year. There's never been a time in the game's history where that's been close to happening (the Kickstarter aside, and that really doesn't count). If there was a subscription it would probably to a large extent substitute for existing ARX spending, so would bring in far less new income than its paper value. ... and the less frequent players would probably just quit instead.
2) Double the number of (active / new) players. There's not an obvious way to do this (it would likely require the game to be attracting players faster than it was when it was brand new), losing the ability to develop new content for consoles makes it even tougher ... and introducing a subscription makes it even less likely.
The good news (such as it is) is that its predictable income is still higher than its (also predictable) costs, so the game is likely to continue running for a while and the biggest risk to it in the medium-term is Frontier running out of money for unrelated reasons. It just won't be developed any faster than it already is.
There seems to have been an awful lot of heavily discounted sales since September last year. Will income hold up even if numbers of sales do?
If it dies it dies. It's been around for 10 years, that's longer than most games. 
I'm pretty sure shallow story events aren't going to increase the player base though. Decent rework of base mechanics for more crunchiness would probably work imo. Degrading the game by making it easier definitely hasn't improved it.
The story events are fine but I'd make sure that everything they add, adds depth to the greater game overall. Glowing swirls travelling through systems and sparkly spires are nice but they're not taking the game anywhere beyond their initial "Oooo, that's cool" factor. It's not an effective use of resources.
I'm pretty sure shallow story events aren't going to increase the player base though. Decent rework of base mechanics for more crunchiness would probably work imo. Degrading the game by making it easier definitely hasn't improved it.
The story events are fine but I'd make sure that everything they add, adds depth to the greater game overall. Glowing swirls travelling through systems and sparkly spires are nice but they're not taking the game anywhere beyond their initial "Oooo, that's cool" factor. It's not an effective use of resources.
Sounds like you didn't bother interacting with any of the new mechanics, other than maybe going for a quick lookThe story events are fine but I'd make sure that everything they add, adds depth to the greater game overall. Glowing swirls travelling through systems and sparkly spires are nice but they're not taking the game anywhere beyond their initial "Oooo, that's cool" factor. It's not an effective use of resources.
The AX reactivation missions / spire missions / titans are some of the best mechanics in the game, they all take a while to master. They also pay well - if I still needed engineering mats or CR they would be worthwhile (and the combat rank from revenants is very nice). Even tracking the titans as they approached from the far distance in the galaxy was a fun thing to do as a group, though not as interactive in game.
I get the feeling most of these assets were supposed to be ready for the story to run once Odyssey was released, but because of the delays (and subsequent team downsizing as would happen after any major release) it ended up taking way longer to come out than planned (remember when they discussed the Scorpion SRV being designed for years? No way have they made all these assets since Odyssey came out). Stretching things out has lost all momentum for me.
My issue with the new gameplay / assets is that there is no reason to do them after you master them (other than mats / credits / rank as per most other activities*). The Thargoids were always corralled into a small area with no hope of causing trouble even if left to their own devices. Having a story more involving than 'now wait 2 months for the next spooky announcement from Seo Jin-ae' could have gone a long way for me. YMMV.
* so I guess my problem is that I have 'finished' the game so don't have a reason to use the new stuff - the opposite problem of all the ones complaining the game is 'too hard'
I imagine Frontier is counting the tiny number of people willing to buy a ten year old game when it's not on sale as a bonus already, but we may well find out fairly soon because the half-year financials are due and they've usually put some information of that sort into the investor presentations.
Yes - a tricky thing for Frontier to balance. The things that could get a substantial increase in the rate of new players (and/or newish players sticking around past the 10-hour or 100-hour mark) are probably mostly disconnected from the things that will get a 1000-hour or 10000-hour player to keep playing or return.
It's a bit of a rebound. The Corona years were really good in selling media and games. Frontier started their publishing branch. It didn't work out so great and demand has decreased so the company has to adjust for that. The closing of the publishing branch is a symptom of that. I think they are going to "core competence" activities. Along with that we saw many CMs leaving, another symptom of the downsizing - maybe there is an attempt to use less staff intensive ways to interact with communities - external platforms e.g. Or it's just a temporary thing.
The stock market likes interpret sinking margins and profits into decreasing stock prices, but you can still turn profit when your stock price deteriorates. It's not bad as long as your company is healthy and able to sell good products. If you bleed out your franchises like Creative Assembly, then it's another story.
That's what I meant. All that work didn't add anything except more ways to do the usual. Once the goids leave or we defeat them what are they good for? If having things floating between systems meant that we would now have comets and rogue planets that'd be great. If the spires had new mechanics that would be applied to the rest of the game even better. But they don't do they?
I don't know about him, but I tried everything outside AX restore missions.
And honestly, since a little variety is good (I can basically split my week gaming time for more activities, so usually I spend 1 evening in AX CZs, especially in last weeks, when we have few invasions)...
To be fair, outside AX CZs I don't see any, single, thing, which could took me for time longer than few days.
Even (in my eyes) peak tier of new stuff last year, new scenarios, modules and possibilities which they brings for making new builds for xeno combat aren't enough for significant change of my playstyle.
Yes, this is good, but it isn't tier of "I wanted to abandon game, but it is so epic, that I will stay here year longer".