Dear FD, thanks for a brilliant patch

[_Flin_]

Thanks a lot for a brillant patch. After picking ED up again after a while, i had a lot of fun with the new content and mechanics.

Regarding exploration:
The primary gameloop was changed to make it more engaging. Scanning a system is now a real task, and just honking does hardly anything.
The scanning was made more "real" as well (now you look at the scanner, not the system map to find WW & EL)
The whole scanning process was accelerated. It was made more profitable. But at the same time the mapping mechanism added depth, and the planet surface points of interest added another level.
The whole discovery part comes on top of it (planetary & space). The shooting and lighting at strange things part is a great idea.
Plus they added the whole discovery scan and mining in rings stuff.
The codex is really cool.
It is huge, working well, well thought out, engaging, well integrated into the other gameplay systems and fun.

Regarding mining:
Boy, this is something different now. I love how you need to map a planet to see the resource level. The different tools for the job on top of the limpets are really fun. From the Abrasion Blaster for scratching deposits, to the subsurface missile mining minigame and the deep core search and destroy mechanics, this is really well done and a nice and fun addition, where you can spend hours and hours exploring for pristine rings, then hoping you hit that Bonanza or Eldorado. And the payoffs are worth it. Nice.

Regarding the BGS:
Well, it is a bit broken at the moment. We will see how that one turns out. Looking forward to it, though.

Regarding Squadrons:
The Squadrons are wonderful, and the Squadron Allegiance board is such a nice feature that i have been used to it so fast that i almost forgot it!
Leaderboards are a nice mechanism to create some competition, although some seem to be very transactional and possibly exploitable. All will probably be grindy, if one is still prone to fall into that trap after 5 years.


Thanks a lot!
Made my holiday.
Everything feels real, "natural" and well integrated into the other systems. Great work, great patch! 8/10.

 

[-VR- Max Factor]

Thanks a lot for a brillant patch. After picking ED up again after a while, i had a lot of fun with the new content and mechanics.

Regarding exploration:
The primary gameloop was changed to make it more engaging. Scanning a system is now a real task, and just honking does hardly anything.
The scanning was made more "real" as well (now you look at the scanner, not the system map to find WW & EL)
The whole scanning process was accelerated. It was made more profitable. But at the same time the mapping mechanism added depth, and the planet surface points of interest added another level.
The whole discovery part comes on top of it (planetary & space). The shooting and lighting at strange things part is a great idea.
Plus they added the whole discovery scan and mining in rings stuff.
The codex is really cool.
It is huge, working well, well thought out, engaging, well integrated into the other gameplay systems and fun.

Regarding mining:
Boy, this is something different now. I love how you need to map a planet to see the resource level. The different tools for the job on top of the limpets are really fun. From the Abrasion Blaster for scratching deposits, to the subsurface missile mining minigame and the deep core search and destroy mechanics, this is really well done and a nice and fun addition, where you can spend hours and hours exploring for pristine rings, then hoping you hit that Bonanza or Eldorado. And the payoffs are worth it. Nice.

Regarding the BGS:
Well, it is a bit broken at the moment. We will see how that one turns out. Looking forward to it, though.

Regarding Squadrons:
The Squadrons are wonderful, and the Squadron Allegiance board is such a nice feature that i have been used to it so fast that i almost forgot it!
Leaderboards are a nice mechanism to create some competition, although some seem to be very transactional and possibly exploitable. All will probably be grindy, if one is still prone to fall into that trap after 5 years.


Thanks a lot!
Made my holiday.
Everything feels real, "natural" and well integrated into the other systems. Great work, great patch! 8/10.

Pretty much agree with all of this.

 

[shreddog]

The game is indeed better than ever.
Infact it's the only game I'm playing these days.
Whenever I try some other game I get bored after just a few hours.
1500 Elite hours played and I'm still hooked on it. That says something.

Still room for tons of improvements and content though. So better not slack FDev, we want those legs, and atmospheres, and new ships, and npc crew, and endless stellar pheonomena, and story archs, and and and dinosaurs!

 

[cmdr Temeleen]

yeah im liking the changes, only the random freezing is getting PRETTY ANNOYING. I can suffer the limited freezes but leaving the game in menu, having a dinner and coming back to completely frozen game is getting old very qick. I hopethey fix that soon

 

[Ian Skippy]

Absolutely OP. Now the holidays are over, here is an interesting pic:

Spoiler

Elite Dangerous = Green
NMS = Blue
X4 = White
EvE = yellow

EvE has its smallish but very consistent and loyal fanbase. NMS has peaks with every major patch (NEXT is out of the frame, but was massive) but a much smaller core base. X4 started impressively, but went downwards almost immediately. ED has its core base among the same level of NMS, but 3.0 managed to both attract new players and bring old players back (to the point it now has about as much as the other three combined). Pretty cool stuff, especially when considering the black hole this genre was half a decade ago.

Now onwards to 4.0, a new year of X4 stabilizing patches and whatever NMS will bring us!

 

[Kaocraft]

Im with you. There's plenty to improve, but the changes to signal sources, POIs, and the way you discover/interact with them has done so much to make each region of space feel distinct and alive. Combined with the more nuanced (if slightly broken) BGS, the "pick a side" scenarios, the proliferation of megaships and all the new Hackable/heistable/defendable structures, and it really feels like each place is different from every other place and what's more I find myself spending a lot more time in any given system rather than just going straight to the station to do my one errand and move on. Great great compelling stuff and I hope Frontier can dedicate some serious time to patching bugs and fine tuning some of the mechanisms they've created so it all works consistently.

 

[Andovar]

You tease!
I immediately jumped over to patch notes sub-forum looking for info on the latest patch!

Yes, 3.3 overall is excellent. Though I am eagerly anticipating the next bugfix patch.

 

[Brrokk]

Rep to OP.

 

[CMDR Beltane]

Absolutely OP. Now the holidays are over, here is an interesting pic:



Elite Dangerous = Green
NMS = Blue
X4 = White
EvE = yellow

EvE has its smallish but very consistent and loyal fanbase. NMS has peaks with every major patch (NEXT is out of the frame, but was massive) but a much smaller core base. X4 started impressively, but went downwards almost immediately. ED has its core base among the same level of NMS, but 3.0 managed to both attract new players and bring old players back (to the point it now has about as much as the other three combined). Pretty cool stuff, especially when considering the black hole this genre was half a decade ago.

Now onwards to 4.0, a new year of X4 stabilizing patches and whatever NMS will bring us!

With respect... EVE is not really a good choice to compare. Not that don't agree with OP, and for sure i don't want to diminish EDs success and improvment over the last years. But like ED, EVE started on its own launcher and moved way later to steam. And its much older, so chances are quite likely that a majority of EVE players still use the standalone client. And i am not sure if EVE has a program that allows you to generate Steam Keys to easily switch to the Steam Version if someone would like to. So yea... at least the EVE stat should be considered careful.

 

[millstonebarn]

With respect... EVE is not really a good choice to compare. Not that don't agree with OP, and for sure i don't want to diminish EDs success and improvment over the last years. But like ED, EVE started on its own launcher and moved way later to steam. And its much older, so chances are quite likely that a majority of EVE players still use the standalone client. And i am not sure if EVE has a program that allows you to generate Steam Keys to easily switch to the Steam Version if someone would like to. So yea... at least the EVE stat should be considered careful.

Actually, a similar thing could be said about Elite: Dangeous itself. It was originally relased with its own launcher only; Steam didn't arrive for another 4 months. Whilst that window is small, and there are tools to link and generate steam keys, some of the original player base and kickstarters positively discourage the use of steam as 30% of the revenue goes to Valve instead of FDev - and we'd rather that support go the developer. I run several accounts, none of which are linked to Steam. I'm not sure how significant this is these days, but thought I'd mention it for completeness.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Now if only someone could bugfix and kick the BGS back into life (currently a persistent Zombie AI doing whatever it wants)

 

[ChromolyRex]

Yeah, that <5k players is not accurate at all for EVE. The standalone launcher used to tell you how many were logged into Tranquility (live server), and the numbers were always 15k-25k depending on the day. Don't know if the launcher still gives the user count, as I haven't installed it since my last re-install of Windows (over a year). But I still see EVE stories on web sites regularly, so I doubt the user base has gotten any smaller. 2018 was its the game's 15th year ... it's going to go on forever.

EVE has several meetups for players in various parts of the world every year. I went to EVE FanFest in Reykjavik (CCP Games' HQ) in 2012 and EVE Vegas in 2016. Both were awesome.

 

[_Flin_]

Absolutely OP. Now the holidays are over, here is an interesting pic:


Elite Dangerous = Green
NMS = Blue
X4 = White
EvE = yellow

EvE has its smallish but very consistent and loyal fanbase. NMS has peaks with every major patch (NEXT is out of the frame, but was massive) but a much smaller core base. X4 started impressively, but went downwards almost immediately. ED has its core base among the same level of NMS, but 3.0 managed to both attract new players and bring old players back (to the point it now has about as much as the other three combined). Pretty cool stuff, especially when considering the black hole this genre was half a decade ago.

Now onwards to 4.0, a new year of X4 stabilizing patches and whatever NMS will bring us!

That is an interesting chart. Lets hope the BGS delivers as well. That will add a decent chunk of long term motivation as well.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

Actually, a similar thing could be said about Elite: Dangeous itself. It was originally relased with its own launcher only; Steam didn't arrive for another 4 months. Whilst that window is small, and there are tools to link and generate steam keys, some of the original player base and kickstarters positively discourage the use of steam as 30% of the revenue goes to Valve instead of FDev - and we'd rather that support go the developer. I run several accounts, none of which are linked to Steam. I'm not sure how significant this is these days, but thought I'd mention it for completeness.

Err hate to tell you but I've been informed that ALL ED store sales for the game redirect to steam now.

If that is true, might have something to do with Steam not being happy at giving out keys for no royalties - but that's just my theory.

Interested in any verification for this - ACTUAL verification, not just "no it isn't".

 

[babelfisch]

Yeah, that <5k players is not accurate at all for EVE. The standalone launcher used to tell you how many were logged into Tranquility (live server), and the numbers were always 15k-25k depending on the day. Don't know if the launcher still gives the user count, as I haven't installed it since my last re-install of Windows (over a year). But I still see EVE stories on web sites regularly, so I doubt the user base has gotten any smaller. 2018 was its the game's 15th year ... it's going to go on forever.

EVE has several meetups for players in various parts of the world every year. I went to EVE FanFest in Reykjavik (CCP Games' HQ) in 2012 and EVE Vegas in 2016. Both were awesome.

Now the only question is, how many of them are bots?

Or not, since the player numbers of other games are mostly irrelevant to Elite Dangerous.

 

[babelfisch]

That is an interesting chart. Lets hope the BGS delivers as well. That will add a decent chunk of long term motivation as well.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Player numbers always go up with a major release and they will go down again in a few weeks until we see the next major update.

What is way more interesting is that Elite maintains a pretty stable playerbase even 4 years after release, which is a pretty good sign that the future of the game isn't over any time soon.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

re-posting edited mod friendly version (that got vanished instead of edited), because the point is valid, even if you didn't like how I said it.

Yes the EvE launcher still tells you how many are playing - as of right now it's... 21,856 concurrent accounts, dupes makes up around 10%, so that's still around 20,000 players, and it's still only 09.43 GMT, so the largest fanbase, the USA is still asleep.

So that chart? lying out of it's backside, but don't let that stop you all patting each other on the back.

What's ED's highest concurrent player number?

less.


As of the reposted time of 21.37 GMT there are now 31,805 concurrent accounts running in Eve Online.

So I ask again - what's the HIGHEST EVER concurrent ED account number? And more importantly, what's the average.

I think the Gnosis incident is probably fairly accurate as it crashed the server(s) and that was what, 11,000 accounts plus those that weren't taking part - so lets be generous and say 15,000.

So many times the white knight fanbois have used the arguement "steam / X Y Z charts are not accurate" when the numbers are not in their favor, but seemingly have no problem trotting out a chart when it seems to show ED superiority.

Yet the numbers I posted this morning and again now PROVE - in real time, right now, "this very moment I'm typing" numbers that that chart is a complete lie.

 

[Rafe Zetter]

Nothing out of the ordinary. Player numbers always go up with a major release and they will go down again in a few weeks until we see the next major update.

What is way more interesting is that Elite maintains a pretty stable playerbase even 4 years after release, which is a pretty good sign that the future of the game isn't over any time soon.

Sorry babel - another bubble burster for that popular fallacy.

"Stable playerbase" - according to what criteria?

When the MMO Star Wars Galaxies had it's official support pulled and was just left to exist as was - player numbers REMAINED STABLE - all those that were going to leave - already had.

Sure new people probably didn't join, but neither was there a mass exodus from the game which is what you are implying. "no mass loss of playerbase = stable futureproofed game" and history has already proven multiple times with MMO's that is simply NOT TRUE and frankly a REALLY BAD way to judge the health of a game.

What you want to see is a steady gradual uptick, and if you are not - you need to ask WHY - ESPECIALLY when new content drops.

This recent spike of activity, is it an uptick of NEW PLAYERS - or it it more likely to be returning accounts?

Only FDev and steam know the former number, but there's been quite a few posts since 3.3 dropped that say "back after x months", so it's not hard to hypothesize that any uptick seen in the last 2 months is RETURNING accounts not NEW accounts.

I think the reality is if you could access the figures of:

total accounts
Accounts with current activity within a range of 2 weeks - OUTSIDE a holiday period - picked on some random day that isn't a weekend - 4 times in a year.
Accounts active for an average of 9 months in the last 12.
accounts INACTIVE for 3 months or more.
Accounts active in the previous 3 months that become INACTIVE within 2 weeks of new content dropping (like 3.3).
Accounts less than 3 months old that go inactive for 3 months or longer.
Accounts less than 6 months old that go inactive for 3 months or longer. (the ones who really do try to give it a chance)
Accounts with less than 100 hours played and no activity for 12 months or longer.
Accounts with less than 50 hours played and no activity for 12 months or longer.
Number of refunds given over the lifetime of the franchise since launch.

I think you'll see a VERY different picture - whichever is the largest number by percentage of total, and how close the other numbers are by percentage is the real story of how well a game is doing.

Example if the total is 1,000,000 - but the "active in the last 2 weeks" is 500,000

yet the "accounts active for an average of 9 months" is only 50,000 - you've got an extremely serious problem.

I doubt FDev have ever done such an analysis - I think they should as they will learn a great deal.

 

[Kaocraft]

Nothing out of the ordinary. Player numbers always go up with a major release and they will go down again in a few weeks until we see the next major update.

What is way more interesting is that Elite maintains a pretty stable playerbase even 4 years after release, which is a pretty good sign that the future of the game isn't over any time soon.

Yeah the main thing you can compare between games is the up/down trends but it's kinda hard to do anything with the absolute numbers since each game is going to have a different proportion of steam players vs non-steam. X4 and EVE are at least PC-only which helps but beyond that all you can say is which game is more popular with steam players. But hey it's something.

 

[Vandaahl]

Agreed with OP, loving it so far as well [up]

I think the FSS should be in the cockpit not instead of the cockpit.

As a VR player, I disagree. Besides, the behavior is consistent with that of the galaxy and system map.