The top 5 Guestimated Reasons Many Players Aren't Sticking Around, and why Horizons isn't Helping

[Atrer]

Great post OP. I would add:

- TOO much of a grindfest
- The trading ships are complete garbage, all trading MUST be done in a multi-role ship
- Multi-Role ships are BETTER at everything than the dedicated ships in the same class
- Combat makes money faster than trading
- Combat oriented Powers are MUCH easier to obtain and keep Rank 5 in
- Make the wrong decision on which ship to pilot, like the Type 7 and Type 9, and you can very easily find yourself back in the starting Sidewinder. THAT will dampen MOST players enthusiasm quickly. It may have been fun getting to that ship the first time but the prospect of working all those hours over so you can make the correct choice of the Python is very discouraging.
- Only ONE path for ships that makes any sense, Sidewinder -> Viper -> Cobra Mk. III -> Imperial Clipper -> Python -> Anaconda. ANY other path than that results in a completely unacceptable number of times being turned into space dust which means setbacks and lost time
- The "mail slot" is tedious after the tenth time. It is by far the most ignorant thing in the game. Flying through the mail slot is so boring and tedious that I too sometimes boost through just to be different. I have not yet crashed into the interior of a station while boosting in.
- Interdiction, after the third time in less than an hour it's not "I wonder if I'll be interdicted while playing today?" but more "Oh, look at all of those ships in my arrival system! I wonder how close to the station I will get before being interdicted?"

FD definitely seems to enjoy servicing on bended knee the PvP crowd and could care less about the trading crowd.

 

[Chance-]

Summary of why I don't play:

 

[Envy661]

THIS.
I do wonder how the MAC owners feel about Horizions. For some reason they will not be able to get it....and of course it's not because of FDEV.
Oh, no. Lets find a technicality to blame for that and not the lack of will to make it happen.
Once again FDEV, pat yourself, the MAC crowd wont.

I've been to the Mac ED board just to see. They're not thrilled, but are kicking themselves for the hardware issues, not blaming Frontier. Which is the pretty correct thing to do.


----

I see a lot of people complaining about the grindfest. To be perfectly honest, I completely understand. You don't need to look any further than what happened at the VGAs to understand this sentiment.

Allow me to explain:
Grand Theft Auto V, or more specifically, the online portion, is currently the single-most grindy experience offered that's not in an MMO or Mobile Platform. It takes WEEKS to get anywhere in the game worth mentioning if you play for even a few hours a day. You can get the things you want only if you sit through and grind it all for hours on end. It's not a positive experience.
So hearing the reaction of thousands of gamers at the VGAs when GTAV was mentioned as contenders, and hearing that twitch streams everywhere were lighting up with comments like 'Who even still plays this game?' did not surprise me in the least.

I want to be clear here though: It's not the grind itself that drives gamers away. It's how the grind is implemented. There can be a grind in a game so long as there's content that fills that field to make it feel less like a grind and more like natural progression. GTA Online doesn't have that.
GTA doesn't have that, and neither does Elite Dangerous.

 

[Envy661]

I've noticed that this doesn't appear to be the only topic talking about the overall issues with game depth anymore. I am actually enjoying the fact that this may become a trend. Tbh, I find discussing subjects like this to be much more productive than the nerf/buff etc threads.

 

[Bomba Luigi]

I've noticed that this doesn't appear to be the only topic talking about the overall issues with game depth anymore. I am actually enjoying the fact that this may become a trend. Tbh, I find discussing subjects like this to be much more productive than the nerf/buff etc threads.

?

Topics about depth have been around since forever, don't know how many millions times I read "Mile wide inch deep" by now.

 

[Envy661]

?

Topics about depth have been around since forever, don't know how many millions times I read "Mile wide inch deep" by now.

I see that a lot in reviews, but very infrequently on the forum here.

 

[_Agamemnon_]

?

Topics about depth have been around since forever, don't know how many millions times I read "Mile wide inch deep" by now.

What about a "shallow puddle". Or "a sandbox without the plastic showel". Or even worse: "a sandbox with concrete in it".

 

[_Agamemnon_]

This game is heaven for the roleplaying-buffs, but not so much for the rest of us.
I dont lack imagination if thats what you think. I think FDEV does. There is a woderful world created in this game, and yet so little comes from it.
Give us the opportunity to mod it.
Not the ships or the world or anything hardcoded into the game.

Give us the mission board. I can guarantee you there will be content then.
My first mission would be from an Imperal count putting out a reward for getting the dastardly pirate that impregnated his daughter.
1 mil for him dead but 2 mil for him alive and well in his escape pod.
If there is a way to chain missions there will be whole storylines told. And all of it for free.
Of course there would have to be a screening process. Any mission or chain of missions should not in any way disturb the background simulation.

Why not?

 

[Koen]

This game is heaven for the roleplaying-buffs

Completely disagree: we tried to set up a roleplaying community with several player groups and we failed utterly.

Mostly due to the netcode problems: by the time the "can't connect to player" error was solved when sending an in-game messages and by the time Wings were tacked on top of the (today still!) broken instancing, all of my friends had left. No point in roleplaying when you can't even meet your protagonist/antagonist in the game.

Edit: Long version of the story is here, in case anybody would be interested...

 

[jmg]

it's boring as hell. for me at least, it's interesting for a few weeks at a stretch, lets me use my warthog controller and throttle and crosswinds pedals, but after a week or two, I put it down for weeks, maybe months. I'm almost elite in exploration, and bored to all hell with it. Trading? ditto.
Even started leveling on combat, but spending hours grinding against nppcs while waiting for some "wanted" player to spawn in hot spots....
Say what you want about it, it's an online game with a programming model that the absolute least conducive to online interaction. no matter what hotspot I fly to, at what time, I bump into one, at most, two commanders in a night (if you stop in the hottest, most popular stations at a decent hour for ET U.S. and UK, it should *not* be dead, I'm sorry).
That's not interesting to me. I've been hoping that they would somehow make this more interesting and involved, but, now, just find myself wistfully looking at the ships in my hangar in SC... hoping they get that off the ground sometime this decade.

 

[gortkill]

4- Trying to drop out of FSD near your objective SUCKS. Speeding past every base you try to drop out of FSD near and then being propelled by gravity past the area is stupid. You think the FSD computers could calculate gravitational effects and compensate for it...... OR give a FSD BREAK…

 

[Mohenjo]

That used to bother me too, but I figured out that 75% throttle will allow you to approach without overshooting.

 

[Pseudofire]

I agree, this game desperately needs a better system for player communication. I completely agree. Better notification and organization of targets. Also ability to modify UI is so needed. They seriously need to add like 20-100 different Sensor units with different display configurations, different strengths and abilities. The items as a core are like, you have a helmet, it goes on your head, we have different size helmets for different size heads and you can buy different color helmets with money. ~_~ *yawn* Explore/ item variation/ elite systems that you have to earn prestige to gain access to better gear/ or quest chains/ and have quests that require you to fight with another player.... the HUD needs enemy and friendly path course plotting line vectors with so many hud customizations. No complaints from me, just want to see more flavor and more incentive to conversation. Let's have a subspace[othername](non-star-trek-version) conversation channel.... Interaction on the station, walking around, talking with ANY random npc can get you a mission... voice actors reading the quests... this game would kill... .... ZOOM camera on target while dogfighting...

 

[Zeeman]

This. This to the nth degree.

To the Nth degree +1.

Z...

 

[Zeeman]

...

FD definitely seems to enjoy servicing on bended knee the PvP crowd and could care less about the trading crowd.

How much less could they care? A little? A lot?

As for ship progression... Hardly. There are plenty of viable options, and th eonly issue I see with the trade ships (which are incredibly cheap, not only to buy, but to maintain, in comparison to the multi-role ships of comparable size.

the biggest issue I see with trade ships, is that the level of law enforcement in a system should be proportional to the system type. Interdictions should be unheard of in well run hi-tech systems, though, running your goods to a pirate run anarchy should result in your T7 being blown to dust, if you don't know what you're doing.

Z...

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

I do like the idea that trade ships should be able to plot their way out or around problem systems, as in Anarchy....and those Powers who say they have high security actually act like it.
It would be really nice.

 

[kukenstar]

steep learning curve? lol,.. When i was 9 years old i started playing fallout 2 without knowing much english at all, thats a steep learning curve.

This game is not harder to learn than to learn making a damn cheeze sandwich.

 

[Badben]

I guesstimate that the OP is wrong on all points, especially the fact that players don't stick around. Actually I've heard the exact opposite, ED players have ridiculous number of average hours played. I Guesstimate that the OP basically invented most of his observations and searched the interwebz specifically for info to back up his own opinion.

 

[Sandmann]

My take on this:

1. It's barren.

Yes it is.. and yes it should be... mostly. BUT not ALL of it should be... the "civilised" areas and the "areas of interest" (rich mining areas etc) should have a lot more activity. These should range from high sec to low sec depending on WHAT sort of area it is... but the vast majority of space should be... spacious.

2. It's quiet.

(I really wanted to add "too quiet" here...)

Again, as above. The "civilised" bits should have noise, the empty bits it should be rare. But that would mean they'd have to implement voice acting which they haven't done other than for the ship's computer (and even then they just got the wife of one of the devs instead of a voice actor, if I remember correctly. Cheap much?)

3. Pacing. The pacing for this game is very slow.

Again, for the feeling of spaciousness it SHOULD be slow... if it only takes you seconds to get anywhere it'll "feel" like you've just gone next door rather than crossing interstellar gulfs.

4. The learning curve is steep.

I don't have any problem with that. My problem is that the steep learning curve ends way too soon... once you've mastered the basic skills there's little no challenge left.

5. The galaxy. Or specifically, the map itself.

Can't agree with you here - I've always found the map to be very intuitive.

My reason for not having stuck around is that they haven't really developed it much past the run-n-gun stage. Seriously, everything else... trading, mining, piracy, bounty hunting, smuggling, politics, strategy, etc is all so simplistic and brain dead that if you're NOT in it for a bit of mindless pewpew there's very little reason to remain in it.

And no, Horizons isn't helping at all from my point of view - that seems to be pretty much exactly the same game, duplicated, and set on a planet in a buggy instead of in space in a ship. Whoop-de-do.

 

[Badben]

it's boring as hell. for me at least, it's interesting for a few weeks at a stretch, lets me use my warthog controller and throttle and crosswinds pedals, but after a week or two, I put it down for weeks, maybe months. I'm almost elite in exploration, and bored to all hell with it. Trading? ditto.
Even started leveling on combat, but spending hours grinding against nppcs while waiting for some "wanted" player to spawn in hot spots....
Say what you want about it, it's an online game with a programming model that the absolute least conducive to online interaction. no matter what hotspot I fly to, at what time, I bump into one, at most, two commanders in a night (if you stop in the hottest, most popular stations at a decent hour for ET U.S. and UK, it should *not* be dead, I'm sorry).
That's not interesting to me. I've been hoping that they would somehow make this more interesting and involved, but, now, just find myself wistfully looking at the ships in my hangar in SC... hoping they get that off the ground sometime this decade.

Wow, this game is sooo boring that you've actually played so much you've made it to elite in exploration. Also it's soooo boring that you regularly post on their forums, so much so that you've ranked to Dangerous. I'll tell you about games that I find boring, I have several in my library, and they all all have less than 5 hours played, and I never post on their forums. Why do you continually play a game that you don't like? is this the only game you own or something, because I don't spend much time on things I find boring, usually just move on to something else. I suspect in fact you don't hate this game nearly as much as you say you do, you just like complaining and whining when things aren't exactly what you want them to be.