Stealthie has my respect most of the time as when he is off track or wrong, he fixes it
Try telling that to StuartGT vs Devari
Frontier's Player Retention Strategy
- Thread starter VR CMDR Novindus
- Start date
Try telling that to StuartGT vs Devari
That's weird because I'll have absolutely nothing to do with Steam and I don't even know where I might find a Steam chart to refer to.
There must be Oompla Lumpas using my forum account to post stuff when I'm not looking. [where is it]
"Oompa Lumpa doopity datz,
We've got some really dubious stats.
Oompa Lumpa zoopity zoom,
We'll use them to prove that Elite is doomed!"
Stealthie has my respect most of the time as when he is off track or wrong, he fixes it
Try telling that to StuartGT vs Devari
And as we know, FD don't like giving details until they are ready.
So people just either play or don't play, and if they don't, they can come back when new content is added or not as they please.
One of the funny things about the ED playerbase is many of us (most of us?) get hundreds or thousands of hours of play out of the game and yet somehow still feel that its not enough, that the devs need to more to keep us playing for hundreds or thousands of hours more! While nice, i can't think of many games which have kept me playing for so many hours. Maybe if i total up all my hours from the various total war games i might approach half of what i've spent in ED. NWN2 might have given me a bit more thanks to the online play.
I know there are other games out there where people play them as much or if not more than ED. WoW, EvE, etc. But such games are the exception rather than the rule.
Rome: 110 (+ a few hundred before it was released on Steam)
Medieval II: 42 according to Steam but several hundred on the non steam version
Empire: 87
Shogun II: 206
Rome II: 330
Attila: 53
Sorry for the off topic comment
I can only speak for myself but it's often not so much disappointment at what we do have but frustration at what we could have with relatively little extra thought/effort from FDev.
The phrase "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory" tends to come to mind with unfortunate regularity.
Some players may leave or take a break(s), but agreed that the effective player retention until the 2020 project releases hardly spells the doom of Elite. The financials reported about $6 million revenue from cosmetics sales which may likely have been more than enough to pay for the game's use of AWS to support the server infrastructure over the past history of ED. The 2020 push seems to be on par with a full on new game or new IP franchise project by Frontier. And there seems to be enough of the current upgraded staff roster to support two franchise development cycles at the same time where Frontier has made a significant number of new hires of the past year or so. As for myself ED is currently primarily the game I play the most where the appeal is very much similar to a (indoor) swimming pool activity or a tennis club. It's there and maintained well enough to get back to regularly on a weekly or almost daily basis.
*nod* Agree. Personally I'd love to have been able to do more with Gas Giants. To be able to dive into their atmosphere, to have your ship's performance perform better/worse based on its aerodynamic profile, to have hull reinforcement packages allow you to dive deeper in search of {STUFF} - that sort of thing.
I can agreed with that to some extent, although, as with many games, if the devs did things more to your liking there would be others who didn't like what they did. And there are those who will not be happy no matter what.
But when it comes to things like Powerplay i'm fully on board with your statement.
Other things, like multicrew, i can accept as being something that can be improved in the future. Powerplay i think would be best taken out back and a bullet putting in its head. CQC is something I think that could be improved massively (whether FD should put the effort in is a separate question) and would have benefited if they had delayed (yes, so people would complain about the delay, especially so back then) to add more to it. That particular ship has probably sailed though.
However, i don't rule anything out with FD. They are closed mouthed about things and from time to time do make some really good updates. The mining update was quite well done i think, and I know a lot of people only like it for the credits they can get, but i was mining happily under the old system and the deep core mining is a nice addition.
I'd prefer that over multicrew anytime.
On the other hand, Frontier promised Multicrew, people asked for it and there isn't much more they could do with it taking the current state of the game into account...
Braben has teased plenty about gas giants for years already. I'm sure they are coming, but what it will be like remains to be seen.
Like what, exactly?
Also i appreciate MC a lot. I mean, i still have very casually playing friends. (Yea, one actually logged in again once in February. ) When they log in, they often have like an hour at hand. Having to spend like 30 minutes of traveling time is not helping here.
Before MC it actually happened several times, they contacted me that they'd have some time on the evening, we pondered ED, then decided for Diablo, Overwatch or whatever else, as that was quickly accessible. Traveling to each other in ED would've used up more playing time than it would've been worth it.
Thanks to MC and me usually by now using a ship with SLFs, they can just jump in, we go to the next RES and have fun for an hour, till wife and children take their toll again. I know that this is very much niché, but when it happens, i am very happy that MC gives me this opportunity.
So yes, it's one of the feature which at least some people appreciate. It sure is more valuable for me than CQC, PP and engineers.
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It's uncertain, from a medical point of view, if I will be alive in 2020. That's how life works.
Take a look at the age skew in this forum alone, and make your deductions. Elite *had* to catch this demographic, while they had maximum buying power.
I have around 5.5k hours of playing Elite: Dangerous with my main character and I have no intention of stopping playing before the next big update as there is still plenty I want to do and I love the game.
We might lose some players as a result of the announcement but it will probably only be 2.8% of the players.
We might lose some players as a result of the announcement but it will probably only be 2.8% of the players.
Yep.
This, specifically, is something I'd love to see in-game.
Even simple things like delivery missions would take on a whole new strategic element - and, possibly, provide a booby-traps of a type that the Loach's carer would have been proud of.
You take on a cargo delivery mission in your Krait to deliver 120t of stuff.
Easy Peasy.
But wait! It turns out that the delivery station is somewhere inside the atmosphere of a gas-giant and your ship just can't get in there.
You head for another station, go to the outfitting screen, intent on installing HRPs.
But wait (again)! Your Krait is set up to haul cargo and, because the cargo racks are currently filled with 120t of stuff, you can't reconfigure your ship. Arghh!
You replace all the non-cargo modules with HRPs and, with great trepidation, you resign yourself to replacing the shield with another HRP too.
You should now be able to reach the station... if you don't get attacked on the way.
You make the journey with toes, jaw and butt all firmly clenched and arrive safely.
You dive into the atmosphere, the view out of your canopy is gradually obscured by a thick fog, your ship is making the same sort of noises it makes during a planetary landing but much, much louder.
Red lights start to flash in your cockpit, there's smoke coming out of your dashboard and there's something sparking down by your feet.
Only a couple of thousand Km until you can drop out of SC now and you see another contact on your scanner, deeper inside the atmosphere.
You finally get the safe-dropout notification and you exit SC with a horrific groaning noise from your FSD.
Your ship handles like a T9 fitted with C2 thrusters in the soup, you blindly head toward the station marker and you eventually see the a platform's spotlights through the fog.
You desperately turn your ship to orient yourself correctly with the landing pad, get lined up and finally land.
You deliver your cargo and you start to think about that other contact you spotted on the way down.
Thankfully, the station sells HRPs so you swap out some of your cargo racks for more HRPs and you take off again and head deeper into the atmosphere.
You reach your new destination with minor drama, your ship taking some hull damage and the cockpit illuminated by red warning lights again.
You drop out of SC, eager to find out what could possibly still be operational this deep in the atmosphere.
But wait (again again)! There's three new contacts appeared on your scanner and they just turned red!
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Of course, I only have anecdotal info on this, but I wouldn't be surprised if during the 2 months of the most serious BGS problems, they found a massive reduction in effort from daily players. When the scale of the problem became clear (including locking up some 20 systems for us in stuck conflicts) a lot of us stopped playing, or put in a lot less hours daily than before. Why work on your faction, when the result can be the opposite of intended?
Now that things are a bit better, people are picking themselves up again, but we lost (hopefully temporarily) a bunch of players, as how often can you tell someone with a hold full of explo data that as far as we know, it doesn't really do anything, or very little?
Still hoping for further stabilization so that BGS players can throw themselves into the new mechanics with more confidence. But Frontier has done significant damage to the BGS player base, that hopefully will recover. But I haven't seen this much anger, disappointment and frustration in the BGS community in years.
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Player retention strategy, is a strategy aimed at keeping players in the game.
Last chapter from beyond proved Elite's server infrastructure is more fitted to the sub 5000 ish concurent PC players we now have.
It is a debacle, but at least now the niche community of this game can enjoy it in maintenance mode.
At least now they got the decency of not going full Peter Molyneux with us, like before. 2020 is a reasonable deadline for a full fledged DLC.
Last chapter from beyond proved Elite's server infrastructure is more fitted to the sub 5000 ish concurent PC players we now have.
It is a debacle, but at least now the niche community of this game can enjoy it in maintenance mode.
At least now they got the decency of not going full Peter Molyneux with us, like before. 2020 is a reasonable deadline for a full fledged DLC.
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Personally I don't see a player retention strategy at all...quite the opposite in fact.
I don't mind waiting for content but I do mind a wall of silence on what that content will be from FD.
The intervening 18 months will be maintenance mode with a skeleton crew...hardly inspiring.
Also there is nothing on their list of upcoming content (if you can call it that) that interests me.
So...some players, probably quite a lot of them including me will leave, a hardcore who love the game without reservation will stay. The question is will the leavers return for the big update?
What happened to the open FD we once knew? If they got scared into their shells by the salt from the players, they picked the wrong industry to work in. Also much of that salt was probably deserved when ED started to go off the rails and release after release went awry.
I don't actually care what the new content is but I would like them to be a lot more open and tell us their plans...it's a risk, but so is the current strategy of dev silence and player exodus. I'd rather have an engaged player base than a greatly diminished one.
I don't mind waiting for content but I do mind a wall of silence on what that content will be from FD.
The intervening 18 months will be maintenance mode with a skeleton crew...hardly inspiring.
Also there is nothing on their list of upcoming content (if you can call it that) that interests me.
So...some players, probably quite a lot of them including me will leave, a hardcore who love the game without reservation will stay. The question is will the leavers return for the big update?
What happened to the open FD we once knew? If they got scared into their shells by the salt from the players, they picked the wrong industry to work in. Also much of that salt was probably deserved when ED started to go off the rails and release after release went awry.
I don't actually care what the new content is but I would like them to be a lot more open and tell us their plans...it's a risk, but so is the current strategy of dev silence and player exodus. I'd rather have an engaged player base than a greatly diminished one.