More than 26000 contributors to the CG
- Thread starter drakkster2025
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Or not. The avg daily players estimates dont seem to have changed much. Just a quarter of those active players decided to get a free hundred mil. Rather than a significant rise in active players.
Estimated number of players per month is still down 50% from a march high of 200k.
FD have never ever commented on the number of players in ED. Therefore “Estimated numbers” just made up. Show us your raw data and its reliable source that was used to make the estimate, or its worth as much as an extraction from a convenient orifice.
Biggest ever CG is about hauling and coincides with the introduction of the largest cargo ship.
Reward is 4(!) cargo racks with slightly bigger capacity when in top 75%.
This is going to set the THERE'S_MORE_TO_ED_THAN JUST_SPACE_TRUCKINGsayers back significantly.
...and I cannot lie
The active players and how much they keep hauling should make it absolutely clear which kind of player is the "silent majority" in this game.
So you're really smart, aren't you? You'd like to put us all in the same box, wouldn't you? I would be very grateful if you wouldn't distract me with your intelligent comments on the player base's mindset because I'm currently working hard to stay in the top 25%...
Steamcharts numbers in terms of absolutes might be off (I'm not playing via Steam either) but it's still useful for trend analysis. And as @Darth Ender stated, it looks like player numbers pointed down since a relative peak in March 2025, unless suddenly most new players all rushed to Frontier's store (despite its notorious lack of regular discounts compared to Steam).
But...but there was a boycott call to not buy it!? Has the boycott ended yet?
The boycott was promoted by disgruntled vintage Cutter/T9 owners. Can't have anything topping their end game ships!
Steam Charts are certainly useful for trend analysis, but their main "disadvantage" isn't that they don't include non-Steam users but that they include the sort of person who picks the game up, plays for 20-30 hours, perhaps gets as far as switching the Freewinder for something slightly bigger, maybe even leaves a positive review, then never touches it again. (i.e. "perfectly normal non-obsessed gamers who'd never be seen near the forums"). At any given time those are probably a substantial majority of player headcount numbers - though a tiny minority of player activity [1].
That said, while they're down from their March peak (the Panther Clipper is big news to a certain sort of ED player, but obviously the Trailblazers release was going to attract more interest overall), there is the interesting point that the current November->July run is the longest non-pandemic period where every month has had >4000 average concurrency. That may well have some connection to almost every CG held in that time getting what would for the pre-2024 period have been a record or near-record turnout for its type - the behaviour of normal players and long-term players isn't completely uncorrelated either.
[1] Back when Frontier published sales updates, ED tended to sell 500-750 thousand copies a year (probably still does towards the lower end of that range, but they haven't published an update for a while). Total CG participation, if you added up every CG during the year and assumed for the sake of total absurdity that every single CG had a completely distinct set of participants, would rarely get close to 50 thousand even in years with lots of CGs
Yes indeed. P2W FTW, told you so.
My pc mk 2 only gains 32 tonnes from the cg reward. The smallest cargo rack is a single class 6 cargo rack. Rest of the class 5 abd smaller slots are hrp and mrp. Other cmdrs with min max cargo in solo would benefit more.
Now they would be more useful on my t8 trader, mining, rescue, pp2 ships. I can now have the same cargo capacity but with an extra hrp for defence. Bonus! So they don't just benefit dedicated hauliers.
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Fair point - am also curious what the split between copies sold between Steam and Frontier Store are these days. I bought my copy of the game when it wasn't yet on Steam (I seem to remember that only happened later, but could be wrong) as I'm normally only buying my games on Steam unless I'm desperate for a particular title and will jump through the additional hoops accordingly then. I do have an alt account on Steam as well, but since it doesn't have Odyssey (unlike my Frontier main) it got abandoned years ago, also because of the much increased SSD footprint the 4.0 client has over the 3.8 one.
Even if I don't rate the PP2.0 and Trailblazer updates that much, they are new content and were released pretty close together, as well as new ships, so I guess in combination that kept player numbers higher, if not at record levels. Compared to the months/year long lulls in the past.
I will also say that I used to play religiously (daily, for several hours at a time, for a long time Elite took 50% to even 100% of my entire game time), that changed a lot but I do play more regularly again recently, with the obvious impact on player stats (including CG participation). I'd say Elite is back in the 20% threshold as it competes with various other games more now than it did have to before.
I'm particularly after the size 5 cargo racks (changed my mind when they extended the CG, and figured the credits are useful also, since I still don't have enough cash for another FC) as they'd do nicely in my Cobra 5 miner & multirole vessels, and perhaps make some of the medium ships I haven't bothered with in ages more attractive again for cargo related tasks. Otherwise I normally skip hauling CGs.