Is JWE good or bad for ED?

Slange Lands

Slange Lands
Just an observation. I may be mistaken, but I believe the same Community Managers manage all of Frontiers games which will include of course, JWE. The only new hire is Will Flanagan. Is one other Community Manager enough for the influx of JWE? Perhaps for the present? Do Community Managers need to be really knowledgeable about their games requiring a significant amount of gameplay? If so, Brett, Ed, Paige, Will, et al. are in the throes of having to learn a completely new game and keep up with continuous patch/re-patches of ED and manage and welcome a different gaming constituency. As of now, that is a definite reduction in assets given to ED. I certainly wish the best for the success of JWE, but I also hope they hire more people to help.

I can understand devs getting bored with projects and some ED devs may have jumped at the chance to do something different. But I sincerely do hope Frontier has the integrity to fix longstanding bugs in ED.

o7
 

Chris Simon

Chris Simon
Old Duck said:
I only recently (about a year ago) became interested in Frontier because ED was announced for the PS4, so I don't really know the company like some of you do. That's why I'm looking for your insight.

Optimistic view - Jurassic World Evolution is a good thing for Elite Dangerous, because it will infuse more money into the company and perhaps provide the software routines needed to give ED landable earth-like worlds with living creatures running around NMS style, but better! [yesnod]

Pessimist view - JWE is a shift in the company's focus, and resources are being diverted away from ED to focus on this new project. It seems like Frontier "spared no expense" in creating JWE, whereas ED feels like a back-burner project these days.. :(

So what do you think, is JWE the beginning or the end of ED?
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To be honest, a company with only one product is a failed company.
I am happy that they are branching out.

I can't see how this could be in any way bad for ED. The amount of support and work that goes into the game is still huge, compared to Planet Coaster, which, although well maintained, with periodical DLCs/updates, is quite small. Just compare the store pages or patch notes of both games.

Naturally I am into dinosaurs, so I am excited for JWE for more personal reasons as well, but no, another stable income source WILL NOT hurt FD. :)
 

TheSynopticVision

T
I honestly don't know the answer to this question. There is one piece of evidence regarding the "transfer of assets" though: has anything from Planet Coaster (now about 1.5 years old) ever bled into Elite? Not that I can see.

So I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for alien-looking dinosaurs roam atmospheric planets.
 

Dbrn47

Dbrn47
Hell if I know. More money for the company seems like a good thing, but some conspiracies say that ED is nothing but a revenue generator for their other games. Really no point in speculating, you're only going to convince yourself that it's bad news, as this thread is evidence of.
 

Tex Arcana

Tex Arcana
I welcome our new space overlords.
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krylite

krylite
Chris Simon said:
To be honest, a company with only one product is a failed company.
I am happy that they are branching out.
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This is a good point. The fact that ED is maintained and functions as an MMO of a niche simulation game yet requires no monthly fees limits its revenue stream where surely Frontier producing a line of products rather than a single one is far more advantageous for the company's future and ED's as well.

While there is less marketing for ED at this stage, JWE has built up massive triple-A game anticipation. The first trailer trended on yt for weeks. Jeff Goldblum was announced to be involved with the project which will soon be released in two months. I think another good news for ED is that as a product of Frontier, it will probably get decent ancillary awareness by those who purchase and play JWE but haven't yet tried ED, essentially some free marketing.
 
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Ralph Vargr

Ralph Vargr
Suvi Anwar said:
While ED is highly likely to remain an on-going project, there are unmistakable facts about game development and studios.
The following is my perspective after more than 3 decades in this business, and I believe ED has fully found its way here.

  1. The current main project will always have the studios attention, most of the resources (both human and financial), and focus. This is not Elite Dangerous, and hasn't been for a while.
  2. Content for projects that are on-going but not the studios focus will be slow in development, and have limited QA focus.Mainly because of limited resources, both in personnel and budget.
  3. Profits from the latest and greatest project never directly benefit older projects.Older projects usually have minimal personnel assigned to them, the bulk of which often include those that are less pivotal in the studios larger goals, or newer personnel that less experience with the engine the studio prefers to use.
  4. No matter how much the project is the "pet" of any studio executives, resources are still an issue. Unless a studio is in an active growth state, e.g. hiring personnel for simultaneous large scale projects), resources will shift around to where they are needed most. This usually means that the best people on one project get moved to the newest project they expect to keep the studio financially profitable.
  5. Art personnel are usually shared across multiple projects.Usually, with a focus on the latest main project, with tasks from older projects waiting for gaps.
  6. Older projects are on the bottom of the marketing and community totem poles.Marketing is very expensive. The average marketing department in a big studio will easily have a budget 2-3 times that of any other department in a studio. Community management personnel are also expensive and is why there's usually minimal focus on older less profitable projects, and the reason why many forums have volunteer moderation staff, it cuts costs tremendously.

This is not an all-inclusive list by any stretch, I could go on for another 4 or 5 hours, but I think the list above cover the main highlights.
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Good summary.
 

Spacecat

Spacecat
The last time I checked, FD was doing pretty well moneywise. Unfortunately, I think ED has become a side project, to be tinkered with endlessly at a leisurely pace.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
I'll just quote what i posted in another thread yesterday:

I think FD are going about it in a clever way. They have a lot of experience with theme park games, so this is a natural extension of it.

Plus it allows them to work on tech that one day might find its way into ED.

PC gives them base building and NPC crowd movements, which might be good for the future of ED in terms of base building and proc gen cities with NPCs walking around.

JWE gives them more experience with the creation and animation of realsitic creatures, which of course comes into play for Braben's vision of getting out of his ship and going dinosaur hunting on planets in ED.

Basically build up in house experience and skills in order to bring those things back into your dream project.

Now, if we were to compare that with another company, who with no company experience developing anything, just disparate devs with a varity of experience, and promising to deliver everything to maximum and better than any other game before.... well...
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Quantis Trap

Quantis Trap
I'm a software developer who lives in the real world and wishes Frontier all the success.

A good company like Frontier led by a man who's pet project is Elite, is not going to give up before it's done with the promises it's made about with this game. The promises made will never be fulfilled to everyone's liking, but I believe they will be fulfilled. Being a real world company, Frontier has to take other project to be profitable if they want to continue pet projects.

All players of Elite Dangerous should be very pleased that they are getting this game for such a deal! It's currently a far cry better deal than the the pay to win (or maybe pay to wait) mess of other huge space games which are currently being developed! I wish those space game developers all the luck too, but I'm not sinking tons of money to back them ... because I don't trust them like I do Frontier!
 
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LaTokk

LaTokk
The preview gameplay vids I've seen of JWE look fantastic. There's clearly lots of Planet Coaster in the new game's DNA and the dinosaurs are stunning. From an ED perspective I can see weather effects being transferable (and from some of the comments, there's some severe weather involved in JWE) and I can think of lots of potential uses for a space equivalent to JWE's recovery helicopter. I think there's a lot of work between JWE dinosaurs and an algorithmic fauna system for ED - JWE dinos look like each species has been hand-crafted; the gene manipulation only affects cosmetics and character traits, unless it's yet to be revealed there's no genetic splicing that leads to new body shapes - although that's bound to be an early request from JWE players and would certainly help things for life on ED planets.

Besides JWE another thing that's likely to be in the mix is the new ray-tracing functionality coming in Microsoft DX12 - DXR. This has the potential to really improve graphics across the board, and will need to be adjusted for in the Cobra engine - not sure on timescales for DXR. It may be that that is where Q4's improved lighting is coming from.
 
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Stigbob

Stigbob
CMDR QUANTIS TRAP said:
I'm a software developer who lives in the real world and wishes Frontier all the success.

A good company like Frontier led by a man who's pet project is Elite, is not going to give up before it's done with the promises it's made about with this game. The promises made will never be fulfilled to everyone's liking, but I believe they will be fulfilled. Being a real world company, Frontier has to take other project to be profitable if they want to continue pet projects.

All players of Elite Dangerous should be very pleased that they are getting this game for such a deal! It's currently a far cry better deal than the the pay to win (or maybe pay to wait) mess of other huge space games which are currently being developed! I wish those space game developers all the luck too, but I'm not sinking tons of money to back them ... because I don't trust them like I do Frontier!
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True there's no serious direct competition at all, which is a shame.

The new x-game will probably be fun, if they've avoided the pit-falls of the last one. But the x-games are all about being a space mogul in strictly limited area's not open world space-do-whatever-you-like-ulator, so it's more of a complimentary game than actual competition.
 

Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
Stigbob said:
True there's no serious direct competition at all, which is a shame.
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Most likely because such games are incredibly hard to make. I think real life data supports such conclusion :)

The new x-game will probably be fun, if they've avoided the pit-falls of the last one. But the x-games are all about being a space mogul in strictly limited area's not open world space-do-whatever-you-like-ulator, so it's more of a complimentary game than actual competition.
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This. X is trade empire game, and EvE is strategic meta game. They are both strategies. ED is none of those things, at least not at fundamental level.

There's lots of indirect competition for ED - other entertainment - and that's enough to keep devs on their toes.
 

[VR] Goooost

[VR] Goooost
Lets not forget that JWE will bring a lot of normal gamers to the frontier store, where they will then see ED and wonder what its all about.

This company was built on Elite. It's a matter of history for them. Their president and many players beleive it to be the gold standard of all space games. Any space game that comes out ought to be measured against elite.
 
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