Frontier Needs Money (new Dev Update from Michael).

[Kubicide]

Not sure if you are deliberately out for a reaction or unaware of how companies work in real life. (maybe you are in marketing/politics).

Without going into too much detail:
Did you miss the memo on that 10 year development plan for Elite, I think backers would have something to say if they dropped it and moved on after less than 25% of that time.
Are you unaware that Frontier is not a single game company but has multiple teams on Elite alone, some on the MAC version, some now on the X-box version and some on the PC version.

Sure some of your points are valid that there are problem areas (specifically communication). However, your decline comments are downright wrong. Sure it peaked and had a surge during sales, everything does. Would you say Dota 2 is in decline or CS-GO just because they had a peak yesterday?
Why does gametime matter from a revenue perspective? We don't pay per hour (thank god )

You also seem to forget that this is the game that the developers wanted to make because they loved the original games. You'd be mad or misinformed to believe that Elite is over now.

It was a simple reply to post, nothing more. And yes I guess I missed the 10 year development post - can you reply with the link? Sounds like a bad business decision to make a 10 year dev plan without having the finances in place to execute.

 

[AsukaZ]

FD needs money. We need a great game.
FD has a lot of money already.
Now it's time to focus on the game.
I would be happy to support the game further but I still don't see ED secured nor FD caring about it enough. Convince me.
Note: I don't have XBox or PS4.

True. Uh-huh. Well that's debatable. Always a good idea. OK. Nah, You'll make up your own mind. Noted.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Pretty much yeah. I have not seen one thing to convince me they trully care about the game. CG's are a waste of time because someone is always grinding in Solo anyway and you cant beat him. Wings give less money and make me and my friends never wing up because we earn so little on the same things. PP...i tried for 1 hour. Not launching the game until next update. Buggy as hell, and Powers are so imbalanced even a little kid could spot what Power is going to dominate even before they roll around. You just need to look at what they offer and it becomes clear.

Furthermore...no expansion announced. Please announce it for 2016 Xmax but please do it or people will slowly but surely go to NMS and SC. Why should we stick around if no major thing is in the making ? How do we even know you are still going to do the expansion. You have no obligations after all...

How about the sound? Thrown together by a team that does not care? What about the love that is being poured into the AI? A dev team that was winding down support would not be doing any of that, would they? Have you looked at the level of detail in a spaceport? Gone up close to it and wandered around? The skybox isn't. Would a team that did not care have done that, rather than just slap a quick picture up with a few dots in it?

There are lots of things that show they care.

There are also lots of things that they have done that do not appeal to many players, and that they have done poorly. CGs and PPS are not less than we would like because they don't care. Either they have misjudged the players, or not put enough resources in (or are just plain bad at designing those sorts of things). But I don't think it is because they do not care.

 

[nedeaalex]

How about the sound? Thrown together by a team that does not care? What about the love that is being poured into the AI? A dev team that was winding down support would not be doing any of that, would they? Have you looked at the level of detail in a spaceport? Gone up close to it and wandered around? The skybox isn't. Would a team that did not care have done that, rather than just slap a quick picture up with a few dots in it?

There are lots of things that show they care.

There are also lots of things that they have done that do not appeal to many players, and that they have done poorly. CGs and PPS are not less than we would like because they don't care. Either they have misjudged the players, or not put enough resources in (or are just plain bad at designing those sorts of things). But I don't think it is because they do not care.

Ok maybe I overreacted with "dont care". Its their game, they do care. They did care when they made it at least. But now ? Now it seems like they are at least starting to dump it.

Also the AI is purely bad. EZ to work around and very predictable. I guess i dont care that mucb about it anyway, but a pirate saying "Drop X cargo" and shooting 2 seconds later is not very good is it? The same 3-4 lines the System Defence forces say is not very good is it? Ok i mean the sounds and stuff are hard to do, but adding some more lines to the random pool? Cant be that hard

 

[Cradle2Grave]

They'll probably take their money and work on a new game.

 

[John Smallberries]

Haven't tried SC...so I can't comment, although fast isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes it beats, I dunno, pointlessly circle flying, pitching for about half a minute to reaquire LOS on your target. I agree a 2 shot kill sounds too quick. I think a 5 minute combat, which, btw, is frequently pointless because someone else shows up and takes the last crucial shot, is lame in its own right.

(Another fix, you silly Frontier people. Whoever does the most damage to a target gets the kill, not the last shot. Whoever came up with that bit of nonsense?! There's no point in taking on an evenly matched opponent, and duking out a long fight, because security can and WILL show up and steal your kill)

I just know that if I had had a chance to try out Elite before buying it, there's not chance I would have bought it, simply for that reason. The rest of the game is stellar (bad pun), or has the potential to be. But gritting my teeth while I wear a grove in my table from dragging my mouse is enough to ruin the experience. Like I posted elsewhere, they should allow moddable thrusters, and for those of us for whom it is a very serious concern, we can put in the effort to fix it ourselves. And then we can cover for the expense by curb stomping all the players who prefer the nerfed yaw.

And to the player who says 10:1 people prefer the nerfed yaw, I'm skeptical. It's a simple enough code change. Frontier could have an event where they unnerf yaw, and people could try it. I would like to see how many would prefer the nerfed yaw afterwards. Frontier wants to have the best game they can. Even if it is only 10% of the players who hate it, that's 10% potential new purchases they are going to lose. Unnerf yaw and all the people who want to fly their ships like an airplane can still elect to fly that way. But they won't.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

OP title was a bit cherry picking - Michael said that income is important and as there's no sub FD has to ensure they release game as soon as humanly possible on many platforms worth supporting. Yes, FD has quite a lot of money, and they hiring people as we discuss about it. Bigger challenge will be to grow team, not to get money itself (not yet at this point). But money they have now will end at some point. They need bigger player base - and yes, they need to expand game itself too.

 

[ZeeWolf]

Please direct my attention towards some game developers that do not think income is important?

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

Unnerf yaw and all the people who want to fly their ships like an airplane can still elect to fly that way. But they won't.

Of course they won't. They would all be wiped out by the turrets in space from the ships yawing at high speed that they could do nothing about. Turrets in space would be boring, boring, boring. FD did not come up with this design in a vacuum. As you will find if you bothered to do any research on here (and, yes, vBulletin searches are awful).

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

OP title was a bit cherry picking - Michael said that income is important and as there's no sub FD has to ensure they release game as soon as humanly possible on many platforms worth supporting. Yes, FD has quite a lot of money, and they hiring people as we discuss about it. Bigger challenge will be to grow team, not to get money itself (not yet at this point). But money they have now will end at some point. They need bigger player base - and yes, they need to expand game itself too.

This is the point that some of the unthinking naysayers are missing. FD do not need the money today or tomorrow. They are in no danger of being unable to pay their workers at the end of the month. They have, in fact, almost certainly got a lot more money in hand than they expected when they sat down and planned the finances for this game - the last 6 month report they issued said their revenue was above their 'best case plan', and since then sales have carried on well, a big boost from steam, and another big boost from XBox. They are probably, relatively speaking, rolling in it. They are not in panic money saving mode, and the funds to further develop the game are there.

The big issue, what this all comes down to really, is how they spend that money, what is most important to do next, where they should be investing. For that, I have seen no one who thinks they have got it right, though I'm sure some think they have it OK. I very much doubt that CG and PP generated the extra sales to justify their development costs. The Xbox port almost certainly has already, and if they have not yet recouped the cost of CQC, it will probably not be long. Personally, I think they should be investing more in the core game (I do not think of CGs and PP as the core game - Wings I am fine with, though I have not used any of them). Investing in, say, a proper exploration system or persistent NPCs will probably also not generate enough extra sales to justify their development costs. But they will help to retain players, and that should increase the ratings and not put off potential purchasers which tales of players leaving would do.

 

[Barking_Mad]

From here: http://www.bluesnews.com/s/158068/elite-dangerous-earns-usd-21m-new-content-coming-os-x-beta-status

Frontier Developments has released financial results for six months ending with November 30th, showing that Elite: Dangerous has sold around 300,000 units, earning the company approximately $21 million (£14.1 million). IncGamers has details on this, including a few scenarios Frontier outlines for how they see the game selling over the next few years, ranging from a minimal "base" scenario, through a "bull" scenario where the game sells like hotcakes. Based on this, they are way ahead of their base expectations, which says they will earn £2.5m this year if they manage to sell 250,000 copies, a milestone they have already surpassed. In this model, they project the game will sell two million copies by 2017, which would equal £20.0M in revenue. In their "bull" scenario, if the game sells 750,000 units by the end of this year, they will have earned £7.5M

As of late April the PC version had sold 500,000 copies. Since it's release on Steam it's sold another 190,000 copies. If the above is accurate they'll have made close to £7.5m. That excludes a smaller number of Mac copies sold. Then there's Xbox copies. The reason they aren't making decals etc is that the time is better spent elsewhere. I can only imagine the uproar from those complaining about bugs if they had people 'raking in profit at the expense of fixing a borked game'.

 

[JasonDL]

... which has never been suggested by FD as something they would do.

They said they never would never allow console priority over PC either, but look what's happening with CQC. When they don't touch base with something they have much more liable on doing exactly that. But in FD case, even if they say they won't do something, they'll probably turn their backs on their own words do it anyway.

 

[hawkenfox]

You don't know that. That is pure speculation.
The game is well rated overall and selling fine on PC/Mac. Further, unlike other online games, FD gets money once, that is to say when you buy the game. Which means that regardless of the efforts FD could have made based on the inputs you are talking about, it would not have resulted into significant profit (although it might have benefited the game in term of quality).
What FD is looking at with XBO is a larger player base ans the subsequent sales. What they should or should not have done based on the community's input is a different story.

User Meta Score is 6.6 for this game votes of actual players. The meta critics gave it 80/100 ... link here

in fact it has fallen to 6.5 as of late.

They said they never would never allow console priority over PC either, but look what's happening with CQC. When they don't touch base with something they have much more liable on doing exactly that. But in FD case, even if they say they won't do something, they'll probably turn their backs on their own words do it anyway.

Some of their marketing tactics are really poor ... various promises and original design feedback from backers

were not executed properly ... with poor reasons too. I think they over promised and under delivered , such is

the reputations of todays gaming industry, not just frontier's ... even AAA titles. I previously tot SC which have

hugh goals is going to fail, but looking at development albeit it would take a longer time, SC takes the honest route

and took their time and not over promise ... we may yet have a winner on the best space sim game ever made.


Personally I think telling the world that their game is no longer in early access before it has enough content have

failed the trust of some faithful customers... of cos they can reclaim that if they buckle up and made their original

promises come to pass.


Honestly, the powerplay feels like a rigged system, artificial and not dynamic. Anyways the numbers in the market

are not sync, no 2 players sees the same number in the same station. Simply because we all exist in different

instances in the same system, there is no way to synchronize the trade data. This tells you how psuedo this game

really is, you are not really trading. What you are doing is a pseudo trading environment where goods aren't really

shipped or bought they are just numbers that happen to appear on your screen.


The more I think about it's Peer 2 Peer technological challenges / limitations ... the more I get turn off playing the\

game. Still I hope some great indie would make a great space trading sim with persistence date even if it has just 1

billion star systems it's really more than enough.

 

[Ruskodisco]

frontier is actually pretty good when it comes to money.
Frontier has over 240 employees and still hiring. also elite dangerous has a ten year development plan.
and remember witcher 3 was made with 200 employees....
but the thing that makes me curious is what are the 200 employees working on? because they have been seriously tight lipped about their development in elite.
my guess is that they have been working on planetary landings and ship interiors and all those mechanics and content that comes with the paid expansions.

 

[nedeaalex]

Please direct my attention towards some game developers that do not think income is important?

DOTA 2 is a very simple game. Sometimes they have 5-6 big updates in one month. This month they completely revamped the engine and added modded games just like old warcraft 3 was. Every 2-3 months they have a big big patch with a wall of text changing almost every hero and item and adding new items and heroes while also mentaining balance. FD add something and wish its goo.d Is it that hard to tweak the god damn repair prices back? I am fine with them as is but majority here are not. Im pretty sure its not rocket science to change some numbers. Ive done game developing myself(on a lower scale ofc) and changing such trivial things was as easy as replace 200 with 250 . . .

Also they even hired economists to crash their own market so that things wont cost that much. Now items who cost 200 dollars before are 1 dollar. They only take 20% of the Compendium and the prize pool for the tournaments are 250k dollars plus(International 5 is 1.6mil). The game is completely free and you dont need to buy anything, yet they keep updating it every month, and they actually care about the feedback we give...

 

[Patrick_68000]

With the paying updates (the planetary landings, the Thargoids, walking around the ship) and the future development on the PS4, the future of the game should be ensured

 

[ZeeWolf]

DOTA 2 is a very simple game. Sometimes they have 5-6 big updates in one month. This month they completely revamped the engine and added modded games just like old warcraft 3 was. Every 2-3 months they have a big big patch with a wall of text changing almost every hero and item and adding new items and heroes while also mentaining balance. FD add something and wish its goo.d Is it that hard to tweak the god damn repair prices back? I am fine with them as is but majority here are not. Im pretty sure its not rocket science to change some numbers. Ive done game developing myself(on a lower scale ofc) and changing such trivial things was as easy as replace 200 with 250 . . .

Seriously? You think Valve are a good example of a developer that doesn't think "income" is important?

Really?

 

[Leo Sagan]

With the paying updates (the planetary landings, the Thargoids, walking around the ship) and the future development on the PS4, the future of the game should be ensured

Don't quote me on this one but I thought the Thargoids were in a free update ? (Not that I care, I paid the premium pass for free updates anyway)

 

[Ruskodisco]

With the paying updates (the planetary landings, the Thargoids, walking around the ship) and the future development on the PS4, the future of the game should be ensured

ps4 is gonna get this game too? are you sure?
because that would be good news but im assuming that microsoft has paid a good amount of money for this not to happen.
but this game does have a ten year development plan so i wouldnt be surprised if it came out for ps5 but the ps4 version would really surprise me.

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

They said they never would never allow console priority over PC either, but look what's happening with CQC. When they don't touch base with something they have much more liable on doing exactly that. But in FD case, even if they say they won't do something, they'll probably turn their backs on their own words do it anyway.

Do you have a quote for that, since I have never seen them say anything like that? Yes, they have said that they are not abandoning the PC and making a console game (usually in response to accusations of dumbing down). But allowing a timed exclusive for functionality that will appear on the PC later, if that generates a wodge of cash or other benefit from Microsoft seems like good business. It is not as if you will not get CQC, you will just get it later than players on an XBox. You will still get the wretched thing before I get proper exploration, in all likelihood. They have also said that doing that will be rare - they will almost certainly do it again for the PS4. But since the PC is the lead development platform, we can expect virtually everything first on the PC (or, at least, no later than on other platforms).

But, yes, we do need to watch what FD do, not just what they say.