The Current Direction of Elite Dangerous is....

I love the lies, damn lies and statistics in this thread. Here's an idea: How about people try to interpret the data objectively instead of trying to massage it to fit a point of view?

People claiming that the Steam users are not a representative sample and can be discounted need their head read. So do people who think a flattish player number is healthy after so many sales.

Mixed reviews. 3 stars. High churn. Farmville In Space?
 
DOWN!!! according to the Steam charts...

http://i68.tinypic.com/2bp8aw.png

Maybe the FDev's will start listening to their playerbase, and stop listening to the 500 or so 'Fanboys' who log in everyday and say 'everything is great'.

Oh ye - and FDevs - if you need some advice, or pointing in the right direction.. just open a single thread on the first page of your forums, and read it (i.e. that means listening to what the players are actually saying about your game). Implement those changes - and BAM!! Elite starts being the game that everyone hopes it might be someday.

What changes exactly do you want?
Do you want only grinding to collect all the Pokemons or would you rather have a frustratingly challenging space simulator like no other game in the last 30 years?

I've been a gamer since the intellivision came out. I've seen games come and go over the years and nothing compares to Elite its unique it's different and that's why we love it

I don't care what Steam says. I think a lot of older people don't like Steam and don't like the way it monitors and datamines folks.
Your screen capture does not show Xbox ps4 or non steam PC players. It only shows one facet.

You come across as an arrogant person. I was once like you and then I learned self importance is pompous and silly.

I'm sure alot of the unhappiness with our game concerns the idea that it's not instawin lootboxes. There is no end game.
Those exploit using newbies in those big ships that they have no clue how to fly deserve to be blasted out of the air by our edgy PKers.

o7
 
Maybe all the pc players have bought consoles and joined the dark side...steam could read zero and there would still be a few thousand players missing in action from the pie charts...steam means very little these days truth be told ^

For the OP's information:

Steam has such a small percentage of all ED "accounts" as to be of such infinitesimal importance I really don't know why FD even bothered to release via that platform/service. It has been nothing but aggravation with it's self-important stats and misleading headlines since just about day one. As for some of the ED reviews by Steam users....what world do they live in? Words fail me! I actually signed up and bought an old game title because Steam promised it still supported online P2P play where the developer had closed the servers down....... of course that was a stone cold lie too! Refunded and closed Steam Account... after a huge palaver! But that's another saga for another day! Sorry rant over and I don't lump all Steam users together when I generalise. Apologies

o7 fly safe
 
I don't trust Steam stats. With Elite Dangerous, I can leave the ED Launcher running and Steam considers me "playing" the game ... :D
 
I love the lies, damn lies and statistics in this thread. Here's an idea: How about people try to interpret the data objectively instead of trying to massage it to fit a point of view?

People claiming that the Steam users are not a representative sample and can be discounted need their head read. So do people who think a flattish player number is healthy after so many sales.

Mixed reviews. 3 stars. High churn. Farmville In Space?

Who cares what the data is. There's lots of people who love this game. They don't play on Steam, they don't come to the forums and they're happy.

I don't care how many players there are and I don't think this game is going to go away.

I could care less what the Walmart of game dealers's stats say. I like playing Elite Dangerous because it's HARD.

I researched the game before I bought.
I knew about the steep learning curve and the complex controls.

Perhaps some gamers had zero clue but bought it anyways?

Cheers I'm done.
 
For the OP's information:

Steam has such a small percentage of all ED "accounts" as to be of such infinitesimal importance I really don't know why FD even bothered to release via that platform/service. It has been nothing but aggravation with it's self-important stats and misleading headlines since just about day one. As for some of the ED reviews by Steam users....what world do they live in? Words fail me! I actually signed up and bought an old game title because Steam promised it still supported online P2P play where the developer had closed the servers down....... of course that was a stone cold lie too! Refunded and closed Steam Account... after a huge palaver! But that's another saga for another day! Sorry rant over and I don't lump all Steam users together when I generalise. Apologies

o7 fly safe
see
Going a bit deeper into this, on Aug 15th E:D sold 2.75M copies according to fdev: Link

Now using the way back machine, we can check steam spy on Aug 30th, only two weeks later and see that at that time there were 1,148,618 owners on steam: Link

This gives us a figure of 41% (with an error of 1%) of all copies of elite dangerous being on steam. The actual portion of the playerbase who are steam users will be larger than this as some players own the game on steam and on other platforms as well, thus skewing the number above against steam users..

So even if steam player patterns have NOTHING to do with the rest of the community, they still represent up nearly half of the total player base.
 
Maybe all the pc players have bought consoles and joined the dark side...steam could read zero and there would still be a few thousand players missing in action from the pie charts...steam means very little these days truth be told ^

I think we need to lock arms and charge the SteamPunks Vermy!
 
Let's see, OP just focuses on a cut section showing the last few months and tries to show a short term trough as an overall barometer indication that the game is "dead or dying"? Which can hardly be considered conclusive on several levels especially with little context and no relative normalization.

What's that, game returns to regular 6 - 7k players per day?

Exactly, the current low is about 6.5k. There were previous lower points in the past three years. All the current pattern shows is a reverting to a lower end of a cycle which taken in context of the entire history (where the flattened section of few data points still show a decent average of ~ 5k players for the entire history of ED on steamcharts) is hardly an indication that a "dying" zone has been reached.

The steamcharts numbers are just peak concurrent numbers, not a total of how many different account logins (with their particular login times and session lengths) occurred during the average day of the last two weeks which is currently about 91k on steam counts alone, where Babelfisch earlier posted a steamspy chart showing ED consistency around 70k to 100k for the last two weeks which still seems decently healthy. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Dangerous-is?p=6576821&viewfull=1#post6576821
SDodtvo.png

Average concurrent players April 2015: 4,471.1
Average concurrent players March 2016: 3,234.4
Average concurrent players March 2017: 4,453.3
Average concurrent players March 2018: 6,286.4

If people still argue that the game is dying... Well I guess it can't get more idiotic.

http://steamcharts.com/app/359320

Good summary earlier of steamcharts and steamspy graphs. "Farcry 5" also came out yesterday. So a major game's release could
probably account for some temporary migration of numbers with steam counted players. Here's a comparison of the major genre space games with mmo (or otherwise loosely advertised) niche. Note that the drop of ED's numbers was not more than 15% from peak and still significantly above the others on average peak graphs where ED still leads on relative positioning on the "racetrack". So nothing really to worry about, game is still resilient and surviving I'd think for many more years to come.

94crt51.jpg
 
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Let's see, OP just focuses on a cut section showing the last few months and tries to show a short term trough as an overall barometer indication that the game is "dead or dying"? Which can hardly be considered conclusive on many levels especially with little context and no relative normalization.



Exactly, the current low is about 6.5k. There were previous lower points in the past three years. All the current pattern shows is a reverting to a lower end of a cycle which taken in context of the entire history (where the flattened section of few data points still show a decent average of ~ 5k players for the entire history of ED on steamcharts) is hardly a indication that a "dying" zone has been reached. Plus the 6-7k numbers are just peak concurrent numbers, not a total of how many different account logins (with their particular login times and session lengths) occurred during the average day of the last two weeks.



Good summary earlier of steamcharts and steamspy graphs. "Farcry 5" also came out yesterday. So a major game's release would
probably account for some temporary migration of numbers with steam numbers. Here's a comparison of the major genre space
games with mmo (or otherwise loosely advertised) niche. Note that the drop of ED's numbers was not more than 15% from peak
and still significantly above the others on average peak graphs where ED still leads on relative positioning on the "racetrack". So nothing really to worry about, game is still resilient and surviving I'd think for many more years to come.

https://i.imgur.com/94crt51.jpg

Yeah, I don't agree with op's notion the end times are coming any time soon, but his data does show that a whole lot of players came back to the game for beyond, played for a short while, and then left again very shortly after. In fact, if you look at the whole graph, the beyond update has the sharpest spike in more players playing, AND the sharpest and quickest drop in players playing ever in the history of the game.

Seems to indicate to me that a lot of people came back to the game with high hopes for beyond and then left after their hopes turned out to be misplaced.
 
In fact, if you look at the whole graph, the beyond update has the sharpest spike in more players playing, AND the sharpest and quickest drop in players playing ever in the history of the game

They still played long enough to buy that sweet, sweet celeste voicepack and even a chieftain kit probably.

Mission accomplished for Fdevs.
 
They still played long enough to buy that sweet, sweet celeste voicepack and even a chieftain kit probably.

Mission accomplished for Fdevs.


If that is their only goal sure. Of course that would not be sustainable long term. I think an attitude like that sunk destiny 2 pretty well.

Either way things could be a lot better for the average elite player than they are now but things are not getting better. Reasons aren't really known as to why either. If grind is the only content then I suppose it makes sense to nerf everything that skips grind into the ground.

Personally I'd like to see the grind cut across the board 25% (that means materials and engineering too) and build on an end game career like system that would be more functional than pledging to powers. This makes a steady income of credits without the grind of maintaining rank possible and enables extra fun things like pvp and overall just shenanigans that get your ship destroyed.

The reality is we will never see that.
 
Maybe the FDev's will start listening to their playerbase, and stop listening to the 500 or so 'Fanboys' who log in everyday and say 'everything is great'.

What about the other 500 or so 'Dissenters' who log in everyday and say 'everything is rubbish'? Don't they get a say in this?

Can you provide some evidence/stats that show the balance of opinion on these forums please?
 
Yeah, I don't agree with op's notion the end times are coming any time soon, but his data does show that a whole lot of players came back to the game for beyond, played for a short while, and then left again very shortly after. In fact, if you look at the whole graph, the beyond update has the sharpest spike in more players playing, AND the sharpest and quickest drop in players playing ever in the history of the game.

Seems to indicate to me that a lot of people came back to the game with high hopes for beyond and then left after their hopes turned out to be misplaced.

Yeah, I'd have to acknowledge and agree about the recent sharp and tallest spike and steeper reversal on the chart probably being indicative of returning players who subsequently left soon after Beyond dropped as you'd stated (and maybe some of it also due to Farcry 5). I'd noticed a yt streamer who mentioned he just came back to look at the game after leaving soon after horizons 2.0.x. I'd also (like to) think it shows that many who like space games whether they stuck to ED or not came back to ED soon after Beyond because most realize whether in the back of their minds or not, that ED is a unique unparalleled simspace achievement despite varying perceptions of its "depth", and the current "competition" hasn't yet quite caught up. So for now, imo, I'd anticipate the current trough in the graph behavior "bottoming" and eventually gaining some traction back to continue another "leg" of the "cycle".
 
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Let's see, OP just focuses on a cut section showing the last few months and tries to show a short term trough as an overall barometer indication that the game is "dead or dying"? Which can hardly be considered conclusive on many levels especially with little context and no relative normalization.



Exactly, the current low is about 6.5k. There were previous lower points in the past three years. All the current pattern shows is a reverting to a lower end of a cycle which taken in context of the entire history (where the flattened section of few data points still show a decent average of ~ 5k players for the entire history of ED on steamcharts) is hardly a indication that a "dying" zone has been reached.

And the steamcharts numbers are just peak concurrent numbers, not a total of how many different account logins (with their particular login times and session lengths) occurred during the average day of the last two weeks which is currently about 91k on steam counts alone, where Babelfisch earlier posted a steamspy chart showing ED consistency around 70 to 10k for the last two weeks which still seems decently healthy. https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Dangerous-is?p=6576821&viewfull=1#post6576821


Good summary earlier of steamcharts and steamspy graphs. "Farcry 5" also came out yesterday. So a major game's release would
probably account for some temporary migration of numbers with steam numbers. Here's a comparison of the major genre space
games with mmo (or otherwise loosely advertised) niche. Note that the drop of ED's numbers was not more than 15% from peak
and still significantly above the others on average peak graphs where ED still leads on relative positioning on the "racetrack". So nothing really to worry about, game is still resilient and surviving I'd think for many more years to come.

https://i.imgur.com/94crt51.jpg

I'm waaay more amazed that STO is still alive; if that game can continue I'm not too worried about anything for any developer outside of megacorporation takeovers.
 
Eh, maybe in a few years FD will figure out how to transition from tech-demo to a proper game. Until then people will keep leaving, since you can pretty much do everything you want in the starting Sidewinder. Bigger ships = doing the same thing as before, but slightly faster.
 
Status from discord, maybe this open the fanboys eyes?

3.0 Launch: Full wing on discord playing elite dangerous for days.

So, the nerfbat started, people get the new modules to use and realize that those modules are non-enginnerable crap (Outdated new content), the servers instability start, the new CP (That i like) start to hit hard on people that he should not;

Results: Today from 70+ people on the wing discord channel, 5 are playing Elite Dangerous (Including me).

Denying facts will not make things change, i'ts a good thing to mention in there: in the wing we have 2-3 white knighs that always aprove and agree with anything that fdev do, those guys are now playing another games.
 
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