I didn't pay that much attention to the financials around Odyssey release expectations, expecting an expansion to attract new players instead of just having a fraction of your old player base buy it is indeed incredibly ambitious and I don't think any game has managed that. It's the kind of hopes you could put on a sequel and I could actually see Odyssey being marketed as Elite Dangerous 2 instead. It's what we actually eventually got with the live/legacy split - it's not any better of a game but the marketing might have fooled more people in hindsight.
Elite Dangerous plans for 2024
- Thread starter Arubeto
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I'm not sure that there is anything spectacular that could be done for Elite right now.
I imagine that keeping the lights on, fixing bugs, adding QoL fixes, and possibly something like voice acted mission packs, possibly containing some new assets might be a good working plan. If they can turn around the game sucks / is dedd narrative they might be able to sell more of the Odyssey DLC. On the other hand we also don't know what is in the pipeline (if anything).
Obviously Frontier's focus will be on turning around the company's fortunes, and not on developing any specific game out of some sense of sentimentality.
I imagine that keeping the lights on, fixing bugs, adding QoL fixes, and possibly something like voice acted mission packs, possibly containing some new assets might be a good working plan. If they can turn around the game sucks / is dedd narrative they might be able to sell more of the Odyssey DLC. On the other hand we also don't know what is in the pipeline (if anything).
Obviously Frontier's focus will be on turning around the company's fortunes, and not on developing any specific game out of some sense of sentimentality.
I don't think I anyone knows what the exact thing would've made it a great game. Everyone has their own ideas reflected in the constant open only/ship interiors/ELWs/base building/empire building threads. But I think it should've been obvious what would make it a terrible game. This is the thing that stands out in my mind:
Arthur, dying live on stream, trying to hype the game play of this new DLC the day before release. Trying and failing to do the 3-ring plant scan. Again, and again, and again. My god it was thrilling gameplay. Spending 15 minutes making zero progress. How can anyone have thought that was a good idea?
I haven't checked the rest of Frontier's game output but if it was anything like that decision, I'm not surprised they're running back to CMS of their own design with their tails between their legs.
^^^
This.
I play ED despite it being a multi-player game, not because of it. That being said, I do enjoy the different challenges multi-player brings, but I’d enjoy it a lot more, and much more frequently, if it was a single player game like its predecessors.
It's kinda ironic, really; I defended Odyssey before it came out, pointing out how I would often choose space combat in other games over Elite, simply because it was there and faster than booting up another game. I feel like that was the easiest and most obvious niche they could exploit.
But then they went and made it take LONGER to get to Odyssey content than it takes to close Elite down and boot up a different game, and even that tenuous advantage was lost. These days, I'm more likely to boot up Star Wars Battlefront 2's mediocre space combat than Elite's, not because it's better, but because it's more accessible.
IMO that's the number one big problem they've struggled with since the beginning. They WANT to be a Skyrim-like game, where they do everything sorta well and it all comes together as greater than the sum of its parts. But because of a few basic restrictions they put on themselves right at the beginning, they end up with a sea of half-baked content, all too far apart to ever merge.
Which is why we have completely separate communities for...trading, combat, AX combat, exploration...etc. If they could just bring all the pieces together, they could have a game beyond literally anything else on the market.
The problem is that there are too many contradictory requirements for that to be possible - whether in ED or in some other game.
Basic parameters such as "number of systems", "travel speed", "in-system scale" and so on have massively different values in a game built around trading and piracy, a game built around long-range exploration expeditions, or a game built around large-scale military warfare. And that's before the added challenges of making it an MMO come in.
ED just looks closer because it does everything to some extent, whereas e.g. X4 clearly will never have planetary landings or multiplayer or a full-size galaxy to explore, but neither are anywhere near.
Can't say I wouldn't love to hear what post-mortem conclusions FDev themselves have drawn, as to why each of their recent flops has failed to resonate with players, and also what they think would be necessary to reach new players (here I'm thinking slightly more in terms of discoverability, in a flooded market, than in terms of the games themselves being enticing; I get the sense the only thing any of the Foundry published partners ever got out of their partnerships, was the minor exposure of being mentioned in newsletters going out to existing Frontier customers 
).
...and then watch the ensuing debates as to whether they have learned the right lessons, or are doubling down on the wrong ones...
)....and then watch the ensuing debates as to whether they have learned the right lessons, or are doubling down on the wrong ones...
Well, Odysseys problems were down to connectivity issues according to one of their reports
couldn't possibly have been rushed out, some people just needed to dust their routers more.
True, the only different perspective one could have on that aspect is when they expect to recoup their investment. I'd say that Odyssey will end up being profitable, just not in the time frame Frontier were expecting, which I attribute more to the issues at launch than the expansion itself. However, when looking at Elite as a long-term investment, I think it's reasonable to look at any ROI on a longer term basis also.
Frontier floated that Elite had an initial ten year development plan and David Braben also said that he wanted Elite Dangerous to be the last in the series, taken to mean that it will continue development in the same way that Adobe Photoshop is. We're coming up to that now and Frontier have stated that they plan to continue support for Elite into 2027, if I'm not mistaken. My thought is that if one were to look at Elite Dangerous as product that, from this point on, had another 10 years of life, which I see no issue with whatsoever, then the investment strategy and ROI would be tailored for that, rather than investing x one year and expecting ROI the year of release.
The reason why I frame it like this is that it would allow Frontier to do a couple of things; A) project growth over a longer term period and work out financials based on that, and B) give them the ability to commit to that development plan, which would also allow them to announce a roadmap that commits to the development of the big features that are highly demanded by existing players, thus helping retain players and give them a solid foundation to market to new players also.
Now imagine X4 sectors having planets to land on. Member the size of these sectors and the time it takes to traverse them? You have to apply a factor to the size of planets, a transition zone, fancy loading screen when you go to a planet. Because anything close to "realistic" would make the existing game burst out at every seam - the scaling alone is a non trivial problem to solve.
ED has a decent solution but it's not perfect because it cannot be perfect. The design choice to have real size galaxy prevents that. And the design choice MP prevents time-dilation for travel.
Many people think, the more you put into a game - ideally the everything game - the better it becomes. It may well be that it's rather the opposite.
I don't see that as a problem per se, but it does speak to what I said earlier; there's no reason why a game like Elite Dangerous should only appeal to 1st Gen home computer owners who wistfully recall playing the original on their BBC/C64/Spectrum/Amstrad/whatever. However, the more modern gamers do want to see some more modern game concepts along with it, and this is where that difference in demographic can become problematic, when it comes to who gets what first and "why this?" questions.
EDIT; I mistook "board" to refer to this message board, not the Frontier boardroom lol. I think the same might be said for the average of this message board too, so what I wrote was in regards to that, not the Frontier board..
The designer responses seem plausible when looking at player desires, but I think it's some form of lack of "designer's interpreter".Can't say I wouldn't love to hear what post-mortem conclusions FDev themselves have drawn, as to why each of their recent flops has failed to resonate with players, and also what they think would be necessary to reach new players (here I'm thinking slightly more in terms of discoverability, in a flooded market, than in terms of the games themselves being enticing; I get the sense the only thing any of the Foundry published partners ever got out of their partnerships, was the minor exposure of being mentioned in newsletters going out to existing Frontier customers
...and then watch the ensuing debates as to whether they have learned the right lessons, or are doubling down on the wrong ones...
A game designer needs to take feedback and translate it into good design. What players say isn't what they really want. A good designer translate player desires into gameplay that appeals to players.
One example is the standalone arena shooter they made. Players wished for more combat opportunities, less punishment for losing in combat. They designed the standalone. It wasn't really bad, the fighters gave a good feel imo. Well - aside from the power ups - I hate arenas where everyone camps the powerups after they figure out the spawn frequencies. Too meta for me.
But that wasn't the problem. The problem was: "Why would I play a different game when I want to play ED?"
It can be shocking news, but if anything require maybe not skill, but at least good TIMING...he can make progress in 1 minute, or make 0 progress in 30 minutes
"idea bad, anything other than holding button too difficult".
Maybe let's talk about bountyhunting, where you can make 0 progress in 1 hour, if you die.
Or about core mining, where you even cannot find core.
Or SSD mining.
I'm not 100% disagreeing with you here, but the 50-60+ age group would include the first/second generation of videogame industry types who built the software industry to its current point. For example: Hideo Kojima (60), Shigeru Miyamoto (71), Todd Howard (54), etc.. If there's an idea that they are all bridge club members and talk wistfully about the good old days before TV, then that would be quite inaccurate. However, keeping up with modern trends in gaming is definitely something that industry types of all ages should be doing.
Well, what ever they do, I would hope they keep leveraging things that sets Elite apart from other games, rather than dilute its "individuality" by chasing trends...
(I am that one guy who didn't like the Mass Effect sequels very deliberately changing to play more and more like other 3rd person shooters, instead of improving what they had -- wouldn't want those desired new players from existing games with similar gunplay to not feel right at home right away... The repeated: "This n'th chapter in this heavily story-grounded trilogy is the perfect point to jump in!", felt really silly...
)Somewhat, but there's also a vocal portion who are really just jaded, but may not really realize or want to admit it.
As far as design leader, the name that needs to be front and center as executive director of Elite is David Braben. He is the Shigeru Miyamoto of Elite. How much coding do you think Shigeru Miyamoto did for Breath of the Wild 2? It's a team effort and he leads them to wherever it needs to be. The first Metroid Prime had to be redone because he didn't want to sign off on it, that's the current status of Metroid Prime IV also. This is the role that David Braben can helm in regards to Elite.
Maybe we shouldn't forget that the entire industry is going through a rough spot, 9,000+ layoffs in 2023. Apparently many that worked on Baldur's Gate 3 are simply gone after the Hasbro layoffs... So not even making a successful game is enough to keep people employed.
On an abstract level when you get to a large enough scale it becomes impossible to balance so the systems have to be designed to be self balancing or with enough freedom for players to make use of the parts that work and that they like most without being forced to use all the pieces of the puzzle.
It's economy numbers so they can make them say anything they want regarding that - will odyssey be profitable if you factor in the post-launch support dev-time and lost goodwill/reputation/player retention?
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Stop trying to defend CIG, it can be clearly seen that they're an anomaly and there's no way they can be extrapolated into a viable business strategy. CIG's trajectory has also diverged from their original stated intent so much that if they were to claim that this was how they planned it all along it would effectively be an admission of fraud.You're not the first to come up with cogent reasons why CIG shouldn't exist, but they do and raise funds for a space 'game' that makes competitors efforts look quite unsuccessful. Can't see how myself, considering as there's still only an alpha to show for it, but they do. You can't really credibly say that large sums can't be raised for the space genre when there is a company (however undeservedly) which is doing it
I think just continuing to develop the game to its fullest completion is enough. I'm not sure the focus on having standout features is what's needed. The focus should always be, within reason, being the answer for anyone who's thinking about playing a game where they can do x in space.