Elite: Dangerous - A Lost Business Opportunity?

[MAAD DAWG]

I am, or was, an enthusiastic player of the game for the last several months. Recently, I found my interest declining to where it is today. I'm not sure if I'm going to continue to play it.

I have a life and a wife, no children at home, so I have some spare time. And ED is a great game, at least technically. The space flight physics are superb, the galactic and solar system renderings superb. The whole premise of the game is superb. Flying the spacecraft is fantastic! So, what's my problem?

Time. The seemingly ever-increasing amount of time I must devote to earning money in this game. It is my perception that every time I figure out a way to make decent money, it is nerfed. Why?

The game is primarily about ships, spacecraft. Nothing in the game happens without them. So, a player must earn money for ships, lots of money for good ships. The longer this process takes, the more disincentifying it is.

I work in IT, mostly with people decades younger than me. I and they are avid game players. I've tried to introduce others to Elite (coworkers, friends, family). When we discuss the time commitment, everyone has pulled back and said "no". I have 2 coworkers who used to play the game, really loved it, but quit because of the requisite time commitments to accomplish anything.

I once read that Frontier had sold over a million copies of this game. At $60/game, that's $60 million. But those are one-time sales. An IT company like Frontier is not going to continue to make its money by selling starship paint jobs and bobble heads. Companies need continuous streams of income. That means more sales. So, what would it take to sell 10 million copies of the game?

Advertising is expensive. The best and least expensive advertising is word-of-mouth sales, people telling their friends about it, and them playing the game, and telling their friends about it, and so on. That is what generates revenue, a lot of sales without a lot of advertising expense.

The way you continue to manipulate this game to ensure that players must invest inordinate amounts of time is hurting your sales and your revenue streams because people are not recommending it. Or when they do, it is with the caveat that "you're going to have to invest some time in this".

What I am about to say is purely selfish, because I like this game and want it to persist and become VERY popular. I am asking you to consider the time commitments you are asking people to make to successfully and satisfyingly play this game. Say a player can make 1 million credits an hour. To buy an A rated Python will cost upwards of 200 hours of game play. A player playing 5 hours per week will have to play for about 40 weeks to save to purchase an A-rated Python. How many people will do that? The reward is too far in the future to stay focused and motivated.

Ask yourself, how many adults with jobs and families can devote hundreds of hours to playing this game? As much as people enjoy playing the game, most will choose their lives, their jobs, and their families over it.

Dabling in this game, just a few hours per week, is not fun. You never accomplish much, you never buy any really great ships. People play games to have fun. If they're not fun, they stop playing them.

Ask yourselves: Is the game fun for ordinary people? What would it take to make it more fun?

The correct answers to those questions will generate fantastic revenues for Frontier.

I want you to be successful. All of us players do. Please consider the realities of what I am saying.

Sincerely,

MAAD DAWG

 

[urFOOLISHNESS]

Multi Crew will be a portal for the person who has little time. Just jump in and make cash, learn and socialize. Also I regularly have 30 min sessions in my Res site which takes a minute to get to and from my home station

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And I regularly make 3-4 mil per hour just BH or 14 mil on an allied passenger mission within the bubble

 

[MAAD DAWG]

Multi Crew will be a portal for the person who has little time. Just jump in and make cash, learn and socialize. Also I regularly have 30 min sessions in my Res site which takes a minute to get to and from my home station

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And I regularly make 3-4 mil per hour just BH or 14 mil on an allied passenger mission within the bubble

I really hope you're right about multi-crewed ships. The game needs a sales breakthrough. But I don't have my hopes up for the next release. I just read that FD has pulled the beta deployment because the multi-crew functionality doesn't work. That's a bad sign.

I make more than a million credits per hour, too, but most new players don't. I remember when I first began playing, I was struggling to make a few hundred thousand credits per hour. If I hadn't done a lot of reading and research on the FD Forums on how to effectively play the game (with the requisite time commitment (there's that word again, "time")), I might have quit playing the game altogether. I looked at the price of ships, I looked at my income, and at least initially, purchasing them seemed way too far in the future. Fortunately, I persisted, invested a lot of time (the "t" word again), and finally kited my income up to where I could afford A-rated ships which allowed me to start playing the game in ways I couldn't before I bought them.

That's when the real fun started for me, when I could afford some A-rated, advanced ships. I began to enjoy playing the game. And that's the experience most people are looking for in games - fun. If it's missing, people will play other games instead.

 

[StiTch]

I really hope you're right about multi-crewed ships. The game needs a sales breakthrough. But I don't have my hopes up for the next release. I just read that FD has pulled the beta deployment because the multi-crew functionality doesn't work. That's a bad sign.

I make more than a million credits per hour, too, but most new players don't. I remember when I first began playing, I was struggling to make a few hundred thousand credits per hour. If I hadn't done a lot of reading and research on the FD Forums on how to effectively play the game (with the requisite time commitment (there's that word again, "time")), I might have quit playing the game altogether. I looked at the price of ships, I looked at my income, and at least initially, purchasing them seemed way too far in the future. Fortunately, I persisted, invested a lot of time (the "t" word again), and finally kited my income up to where I could afford A-rated ships which allowed me to start playing the game in ways I couldn't before I bought them.

That's when the real fun started for me, when I could afford some A-rated, advanced ships. I began to enjoy playing the game. And that's the experience most people are looking for in games - fun. If it's missing, people will play other games instead.

If the game needs a sales breakthrough it's not in giving players easier money.

If you're struggling with money you're either doing something very wrong or aiming very high...I'm sorry to say that earning less when you start a game than when you've progressed in it is kind of...how it should be? If I were earning millions at the start and millions when I had put the time into the mother of all warships then what'd be the point of progression from a monetary view?

The game demands time period. But the earning of money is not one of the bad aspects any more - just people's expectations of jumping in an A-rated 'conda within hours.

 

[Iskariot]

Time. The seemingly ever-increasing amount of time I must devote to earning money in this game.

No not true. It apparently is easier than ever before if you are prepared to cheese.
Just yesterday I read someone saying that he was new to the game and needed advise outfitting his Corvette.
Yes... CORVETTE!!!! For god's sake!!!

Regular earnings through trading, bounty hunting or whatever have not become more difficult at all.

It is my perception that every time I figure out a way to make decent money, it is nerfed. Why?

Most likely because it is the cheese of cheese and really needs to be removed from the game.

The game is primarily about ships, spacecraft. Nothing in the game happens without them. So, a player must earn money for ships, lots of money for good ships. The longer this process takes, the more disincentifying it is.

But only if you do play the game obsessively focused on the maximization of credits.
People who do that burn out.

A player playing 5 hours per week will have to play for about 40 weeks to save to purchase an A-rated Python.

In the meanwhile you will have played around with a lot of other fun ships and have done all kinds of things.
That is called playing the game.
If you don't want to play the game then why are you playing the game?

Ask yourself, how many adults with jobs and families can devote hundreds of hours to playing this game? As much as people enjoy playing the game, most will choose their lives, their jobs, and their families over it.

This is a long term game. It is completely different from games you finish in 6 hours or so.
If you want that, then play that.

Ask yourselves: Is the game fun for ordinary people? What would it take to make it more fun?

That is a legit question and things could be done in that respect, but not what you are suggesting.
It is already too easy to get a ship like the Python these days.
Making it even more easy would be disgraceful.

Please consider the realities of what I am saying.

Your realities are definitely not my realities.
I have a job too. It took me a long time to get the Python, much longer than it takes nowadays, and I considered my road towards that goal just as having fun in the game. I tried all sorts of stuff and even decided to grind a bit and when I had enough of that I went bounty hunting, ranking with the major factions, mining etc...
I flew the Sidewinder, the Viper, the Eagle, the Cobra, the Asp, the T7 and the Imperial Clipper and then I finally got my Python.
And then... I had to A-rate it.... and some of those parts cost as much or more than the Python itself .
I loved slowly buying better components for my ship and experience it becoming better and better.

People who can only see their end goal of owning a particular ship will never be contend, because when you have that big ship the fundamental gameplay mechanics don't change.
Just enjoy the moment and eventually you will discover that you can buy that ship you want.

And don't forget to play other games too. That keeps ED fresh and fun.

 

[Tryst]

If we had more long term goals rather than just cash requirements, it might encourage people to play more.

Cap ships, small bases to store our ships and commodities (either planetary or space stations), More ships (can't have too many ships in a space sim) and so on.

Stories are not good, they move with the game so new players come in halfway through and don't know what' going on. If a story must be used, it must have a start and an end so new players can play the whole story out (ref: WOW that has a story everyone can follow via quests no matter when they joined the game).

Without this, it simply becomes a daily grind for credits so you can go out and earn some more credits.

 

[kilvenny]

Currently as Tryst says the game is all about credits. I would like to see rankings above Elite and then a leaderboard based on a score derived from the 3 main categories of Elite ranking. Although based on credits, it gives a competitive edge. I would also restructure player factions and power play to create a proper guild system that utilises the mission system to create the activities where the player faction is expanding into. Players participating in guild activities get insurance rebates on loss of ship, but still get paid making faction activities lucrative.

 

[MAAD DAWG]

If you're struggling with money you're either doing something very wrong or aiming very high...

StiTch, you misunderstood me. I'm making good money. I own 7 A-rated ships and until recently when I bought an A-rated Anaconda, I had over a billion credits.

I'm currently a Tycoon.

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Iskariot, I'm not attached to anything I'm suggesting. They're just ideas based on my own experiences.

I don't care how FD sells more copies of this game, they just need to do it.

As much as we like it as a game, ED is a product sold by a business, first and foremost.

Without a steady stream of new revenues to support an expensive engineering staff, this game will not survive.

The company can't afford to keep investing money for development and maintenance, can't afford to maintain an infrastructure of servers and networking gear, with just the sales of ship paint jobs and bobble heads.

Frontier Development has to generate new sales, new purchases, of the game.

To do that, the game has to appeal to more people. If you've got ideas on how to do that, share 'em.

 

[Peter Thompson]

I am working two jobs at the moment, being a professor in two universities at the same time. I work from 8 am to 9 pm from monday to thursdays, and from friday to saturdays from 8 am to 5 pm. I started playing in 2014 and have put 1,100 hours into the game, and got myself a Conda. I simply played at my own pace. One hour or two daily during the week, and anything from 6-10 hours on weekends and days off. I understand you want a new ship. I want a Cutter now. But Elite is a game that is best played with having fun in mind than with a certain credit grind in mind. Once you get your new ship, you'll realize its not that different from what you had, and facing the existencial crisis of not knowing what to do next, you might as well end up quitting.

Find the fun first, is my advice. Instead of going straight to the grind, ask yourself... what would I like to do? Think of the mission board as suggestions of what you can do and not as the determinant of what you should do; try and figure out how to perform your favorite role like bounty hunting, trading, mining, etc on your own. Once the shackles are broken, you will start having more fun. That's what happened to me at least.

Now to answer your question, is this game fun for ordinary people? That depends. It's no secret science fiction games tend to be already somewhat of a niche in general, let alone space sims and sandboxy games like this one. I doubt gameplay will change dramatically to accomodate folks who want everything quick and easy. It's just not the nature of Elite. If you play by it's rules, you work your way up. But you can find your way around. Minor research can teach you how to yield a lot of credits per hour if you just need to fatten that purse as soon as possible. The learning curve will still be there, though. The skill requirement too. And, in the end, your shiny new Anaconda is going to perform better, sure, but the activities won't change much. Now what?

That's why I recommend finding something fun first, and then worry about getting the credits.

 

[Iskariot]

Frontier Development has to generate new sales, new purchases, of the game.

To do that, the game has to appeal to more people. If you've got ideas on how to do that, share 'em.

I do my best .
I must have made at least 50/60/70 proposals ever since the kickstarter came online.

 

[StiTch]

To do that, the game has to appeal to more people. If you've got ideas on how to do that, share 'em.

Yeah. Boot out the engineers...

 

[Tryst]

I don't care how FD sells more copies of this game, they just need to do it.

As much as we like it as a game, ED is a product sold by a business, first and foremost.

Without a steady stream of new revenues to support an expensive engineering staff, this game will not survive.

The company can't afford to keep investing money for development and maintenance, can't afford to maintain an infrastructure of servers and networking gear, with just the sales of ship paint jobs and bobble heads.

Frontier Development has to generate new sales, new purchases, of the game.

To do that, the game has to appeal to more people. If you've got ideas on how to do that, share 'em.

Many have suggested ideas and there are a lot of really good ideas in the suggestions forums. However, we have a problem with both FD themselves and a small number of players.

Expansion is the key to this game considering how many unused systems we have out there but it does appear that FD is not going down that route and a few narrow minded players appear to be supporting them on this. If exploration is the ONLY way to appreciate the scale of the galaxy in this game, it WILL die. As I have said many times before, the lack of long term goals such as creating your own bases in distant systems and having big cap ships to move the resources to those systems to build it is what is preventing players moving out of the bubble. Sadly, the bubble is boring as it confines us, not just in terms of area we can work in but also, in terms of what we can do. Make the game a REAL sandbox.

 

[MAAD DAWG]

Many have suggested ideas and there are a lot of really good ideas in the suggestions forums. However, we have a problem with both FD themselves and a small number of players.

...the lack of long term goals such as creating your own bases in distant systems and having big cap ships to move the resources to those systems to build it is what is preventing players moving out of the bubble.

Actually, I do very little in the bubble. I've accomplished almost everything I've done (which is considerable) outside the bubble. Maybe I'm missing something.

Owning my own solar system is something I could wrap my mind around as a long-term goal. I could raise taxes, enforce speed limits with mega-fines, and tin cup beg like the local political factions do for donations. Then, ELITE would be too small a rank! I could become as rich as God, or at least Zemina Torval.

I want to be addressed as KING or LORD, although being worshiped as a god has a certain appeal. I think I might make that a requirement for living in my solar system.

Taxes? How much did you make last year? Send it in.

Rep? I'll be giving it rather than getting it. It's good to be King.

Yeah, you've got the right ideas.

 

[CMDR Heisenberg B. Damned]

Yeah. Boot out the engineers...

I really like the engineers in their current form. I know it's possibly a P2W but the forcing me to play out of your comfort zone has expanded my comfort zone.