The future of Elite Dangerous

CMDR_LS

C
Cosmo said:
Where does it say ED is not growing? New players are still joining after 10 years. In March 2025 ED had a record amount of concurrent players (13,254) on Steam. The previous time ED had this many was June 2021 (15,554 concurrent players).

I don't mind that they sell ships for ARX to fund development. Fdev could make a lot more by selling ship interior cosmetics.
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it's been like that since Odyssey with numbers usually reach 13k during major updates. Point is - these spikes are just returning players who are coming to check out the "new content". I doubt ED gets many new players and those who do want to check it out, usually get bored and leave. An example would be all the SC fans who grow tried of CIG scams, decided to give ED a try, get bored of ED after 1 week and go back to SC (despite how buggy of a mess SC is).

I think if FDev focused on pushing the real vision Braben pitched back in during the Kickstart time, we would see SC level of players.
 

Cosmo

Cosmo
CMDR_LS said:
it's been like that since Odyssey with numbers usually reach 13k during major updates.
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13k peak players is unusual. If you check the Steam charts, between January 2023 and October 2024 the peak concurrent players stayed below 10k. November 2024 had 10,606 peak players. Average players was 6,895 in march 2025 on Steam. This average player number was previously surpassed in June 2021 (7,523). So Trailblazers brought back lots of players.
 
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anShpan

A
Ongoing CG in Dhan has 10,953 registered Contributors at the moment and Tiers was recently upped to 7 due to high tempo. And "content" is as old as ED is. Perhaps, that is a good representation of stable players base - those not for new content and hardly new players only.
By other words, that content is 40 years old. And me personally joined EDO (and this is only game I play) while having absolutely no Idea who is Braben (with all respect) and what is his real / unreal vision is about.
 

CR33P

CR33P
CMDR_LS said:
I was just watching Obsidian's video about "what players REALLY want" vs the 💩 we are getting from Fdev today. Later in the video he was showing bits and pieces from Braben talking about the REALLY cool stuff that will be coming to Elite in the near future (i.e ship interior gameplay, atmo landing, real planetary life etc).

looking at Elite today and I am like, this is 1000000% not Braben's vision, or at least not his complete vision. I would say what we have today is probably 40% of his vision since Elite does have the most accurate physically based space simulation including the galaxy simulation. However, that's about it.

I am afraid that Elite Dangerous under Fdev new leadership is slowly becoming a mini Star Citizen, with pay to win ships, predatory marketing focused entirely around ships sales and boring gameplay that doesn't work. Sometimes I wonder if David Braben is really happy with the direction of Elite.
I could tolerate the need to make money via ship sales if Fdev at least delivered exciting new content and gameplay. However, like SC, all we are getting are ship sales and boring and buggy content.

- a concerned CMDR
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Take David Braben's name out of your mouth. This is a ty take, as is Obsidian's
 

zimms

zimms
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Lord Proton

L
Fenyl said:
Atmospheric landings? That seems the most straightforward... but for what? To land in one of the same 10 outposts or installations?
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I would argue that the planetary landing mechanic as is lacks variety in a big way, not to mention that it seems strange that planets with atmosphere, water, foliage etc are mysteriously non landable. IMO adding atmospherics would simply add much needed variety to an existing mechanic.

I'm an explorer at heart, and to me at least, this would very much enhance the feeling of a living breathing immersive galaxy.
 
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Jinx Chrome

Jinx Chrome
Lord Proton said:
I would argue that the planetary landing mechanic as is lacks variety in a big way, not to mention that it seems strange that planets with atmosphere, water, foliage etc are mysteriously non landable. IMO adding atmospherics would simply add much needed variety to an existing mechanic.

I'm an explorer at heart, and to me at least, this would very much enhance the feeling of a living breathing immersive galaxy.
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Not mysterious: In lore, the Pilots Federation does not allow us to land on these worlds. From an RL perspective, it is not that FDev would not want to make atmospheric planets. The challenge is that it is extremely hard to develop and puts quite a load on the gaming rigs when done the right way. Consider: Atmospheric flight model, water (oceans, rivers, lakes, rain, snowfall etc.), weather, flora. And then we haven't talked yet about necessary updates on the ships, ground vehicles and game loops.

Remembering the outcry of Odyssey putting a lot of strain on the clients, I do not want to imagine what happens when atmospheric worlds would be released.
 

Jinx Chrome

Jinx Chrome
Koma Pahu said:
TBF we were told that it would need the same minimum requirements as Horizons when they launched the presales.

If they were honest about needing a top of the range rig for ELW, people would accept that. But if they were to do an Odyssey again, releasing something that only runs at 30fps on the recommended spec would causes some bad feelings.
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Completely agree with you! They should have communicated the system specs for Odyssey more clearly from the very start. I suspect that marketing won over dev :p (yet, have to hear about a company where this isn't the case).

If I had to estimate what specs would be required for a halfway acceptable atmospheric world (water bodies, weather, static flora, excluding large(r) settlements/cities and fauna), I'd assume that nothing below an RTX 4080 would make us happy.
 

Lord Proton

L
Jinx Chrome said:
Not mysterious: In lore, the Pilots Federation does not allow us to land on these worlds. From an RL perspective, it is not that FDev would not want to make atmospheric planets. The challenge is that it is extremely hard to develop and puts quite a load on the gaming rigs when done the right way. Consider: Atmospheric flight model, water (oceans, rivers, lakes, rain, snowfall etc.), weather, flora. And then we haven't talked yet about necessary updates on the ships, ground vehicles and game loops.

Remembering the outcry of Odyssey putting a lot of strain on the clients, I do not want to imagine what happens when atmospheric worlds would be released.
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I thought the lore was around atmospheric planets with cities, although to be fair it's an assumption based on a vague recollection of a forum post from a dev a few years back. I seem to remember he suggested potentially using bio domes as a way to stop players getting too close to buildings (not to mention crashing kamikaze style 😅 )

For now, I'll keep dreaming of the day I can fly out into the black and discover amazing new planets with lush vegetation and exotic fauna
 

Lord Proton

L
Jinx Chrome said:
Completely agree with you! They should have communicated the system specs for Odyssey more clearly from the very start. I suspect that marketing won over dev :p (yet, have to hear about a company where this isn't the case).

If I had to estimate what specs would be required for a halfway acceptable atmospheric world (water bodies, weather, static flora, excluding large(r) settlements/cities and fauna), I'd assume that nothing below an RTX 4080 would make us happy.
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I'm sure you could run atmospheric planets well across a range of system specs as long as you could adjust the level of planetary graphical detail and quality. I do a lot of 3D work and you might be surprised by how much render times are reduced by simply dialling down details for very little noticeable difference.
 

GraXXoR

GraXXoR
DjVortex said:
People have been predicting the collapse of the game, non-stop, since it was still in its crowdfunding stage. Not much has changed over all this time.
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Hey, my relative was kept on life support for over 20 years before they switched her off... Doesn't mean she had any decent standards of living. Not much changed while she was around, either.
 

Red Rocket

Red Rocket
I started my Elite venture in 2016, after over 3500 hours mostly in VR, I have seen many looks in Elite. Some good times and not so good.
I been through exciting growth of planet landings, Distant Worlds 2, Carriers addition, Gnosis/Cone sector “ disaster “…… good times.
Then there comes Odyssey and the Elite Dangerous drought, deep dark period.

Now I see the change in direction of Frontier/Fdev bringing a new focus to Elite Dangerous improvements.
Not only new ships but we got SCO drives that make getting around much more efficient…… YEA.

The Distance Worlds team see the new direction and announces DW3 .

I applaud the purchasing of new ships as a great way for Elite to make needed income for game development.
Frontier needs to create income in Elite to continue updating and game development so I gladly purchase every ship.

This is a great way for me to support the game I love and also get new exciting ships.
 

anumist

anumist
the only thing that i think fit less with braben's vision is the odyssey update ( first person mode ). In any ways, me i dont do these missions, i always stays on my ship.
 

Jaffz

Jaffz
thistle said:
To be honest that sounds more like your vision than Braben's, he always seemed to have on foot in mind, presumably time and funds allowing.
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If we're talking about his vision, I remember him talking about how it would be disappointing if we landed on a planet and it was just a differently coloured height map

Which is exactly what we've ended up with
 
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