Frontier's Player Retention Strategy

[Stealthie]

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.

I guess 3.3 was a bit of an aberration in that it was an update which made this stuff worse... and was then followed by the announcement that we aren't getting further significant updates for over a year.
In that case, I guess it's reasonable to request that something gets updated - simply to get it back to the way it was - or risk losing players.

In general, though, as long as the BGS, PP, exploration, trading or whatever is ticking-over as it should be, I think the majority of players will just continue to play as much as they want to regardless of any "baubles" that we're presented with in the meantime.

Let's face it, I doubt many people are going to log in and play just so they can experience a new kind of "scenario" in TL0 Distress Call USS's or do a new kind of cargo mission that allows you to deliver your cargo to an alternate buyer.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Oh yeah - once things work as expected, I am not concerned. The BGS players will likely be here till the bitter end of server turn-off (eventually), and potentially beyond, if the open source/run your own ED servers promise is kept

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

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.

Why do you care so much about Frontier not divulging the specifics of their development plans ahead of time?

I've been trying to understand why members of the community are sore on this point. Until an update is deployed, the game remains as it is, and you'll either continue to play it or not, knowing what it is and what you can do. Sooner or later, before an update is released, we get the details of what it includes, then you can decide if you want to try out the new stuff or stop playing the game. If you try out the new stuff and like it, you can keep playing, if not you can stop playing.

What actual difference does it make to you if you know what the new content will be now, or closer to when it's released? I mean you specifically, so put aside for a moment the reason that a section of the community is upset by the lack of information early on.

You know that if the details of a development item are published while it's still fluid and subject to change, then a change in that item or a decision to drop or postpone it will cause a lot of players to get upset. People are still going on about Fleet Carriers and Ice Planets. Why is that risk worth telling the community what they have planned ahead of time? What benefit would this early knowledge give you such that the risk is justified or balanced?

As for the player exodus, I think that's a little dramatic. You have your peak and quiet periods, and people take a break and come back later, but the number of registered players continues to grow, as the financial report showed, and you get resurgences in the number of concurrent players when new content is added. It's not only the hardcore fans who remain. Many players who have a number of reservations with the game continue to play and enjoy the game as it is.

Also, this whole "maintenance mode" trope is simply not applicable. Maintenance mode signifies that a game or software project has reached a point where it's considered pretty much completed or finished, and is only being maintained with usually the minimum of fixes and minor tweaking. But for Elite there's a planned major release, and in the lead up to that release there are bug fixes, QoL improvements, BGS fixes and improvements, a new welcoming experience for players starting out, planned periodic development supported events, new assets, and new content and features. If what you know of the interim changes so far doesn't interest or inspire you that's fair enough, but I think stating that the game is in maintenance mode is just a way for people who aren't happy with the current state of affairs to put a doomy spin on things.

 

[Cageman]

Added to which, the success of mining is also likely to undermine alternative opportunities.

Piracy is extremely lucrative as well. Those Diamonds can sell for as much as 700k on a black market. Hit a T9, that usually have 200+ of them, you'll get rich fast.

Of course, this means that you need to know where to hunt and where to sell.

 

[Dutchman141]

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 agree with you completely.
Imho fdev won't get any more salt then they're already getting right now.
Chances are that more players become excited knowing what they're waiting for this one and a half year.
I don't get this ludicrous secretive stance they're displaying, other devs don't seem to have much trouble with letting their playerbase know what they're working on, and as far as I've seen they're not getting very much burned for it.
Fdev has a lot of qualities, managing their playerbase isn't one of them imho.

If they want to retain their playerbase then silence could well be an awful strategy, it deffinitly doesn't tickle my senses or get me excited for the upcoming eighteen months, no matter how excited they might be about what they're working on.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

I agree with you completely.
Imho fdev won't get any more salt then they're already getting right now.
Chances are that more players become excited knowing what they're waiting for this one and a half year.
I don't get this ludicrous secretive stance they're displaying, other devs don't seem to have much trouble with letting their playerbase know what they're working on, and as far as I've seen they're not getting very much burned for it.
Fdev has a lot of qualities, managing their playerbase isn't one of them imho.

If they want to retain their playerbase then silence could well be an awful strategy, it deffinitly doesn't tickle my senses or get me excited for the upcoming eighteen months, no matter how excited they might be about what they're working on.

Do you mean that Frontier have not tried to implement a player retention strategy, or do you mean that you don't agree that the measures they've put in place will be sufficient, or that they're not even needed?
Clearly they've taken steps to try to keep players involved in the lead up to the major release, so I think you might mean one of the latter.

I'd also ask you the same question I asked Urbanski101, as I'm interested to know:

"Why do you care so much about Frontier not divulging the specifics of their development plans ahead of time?

I've been trying to understand why members of the community are sore on this point. Until an update is deployed, the game remains as it is, and you'll either continue to play it or not, knowing what it is and what you can do. Sooner or later, before an update is released, we get the details of what it includes, then you can decide if you want to try out the new stuff or stop playing the game. If you try out the new stuff and like it, you can keep playing, if not you can stop playing.

What actual difference does it make to you if you know what the new content will be now, or closer to when it's released? I mean you specifically, so put aside for a moment the reason that a section of the community is upset by the lack of information early on.

You know that if the details of a development item are published while it's still fluid and subject to change, then a change in that item or a decision to drop or postpone it will cause a lot of players to get upset. People are still going on about Fleet Carriers and Ice Planets. Why is that risk worth telling the community what they have planned ahead of time? What benefit would this early knowledge give you such that the risk is justified or balanced?"

 

[Urbanski101]

Why do you care so much about Frontier not divulging the specifics of their development plans ahead of time?

I've been trying to understand why members of the community are sore on this point. Until an update is deployed, the game remains as it is, and you'll either continue to play it or not, knowing what it is and what you can do. Sooner or later, before an update is released, we get the details of what it includes, then you can decide if you want to try out the new stuff or stop playing the game. If you try out the new stuff and like it, you can keep playing, if not you can stop playing.

What actual difference does it make to you if you know what the new content will be now, or closer to when it's released? I mean you specifically, so put aside for a moment the reason that a section of the community is upset by the lack of information early on.

You know that if the details of a development item are published while it's still fluid and subject to change, then a change in that item or a decision to drop or postpone it will cause a lot of players to get upset. People are still going on about Fleet Carriers and Ice Planets. Why is that risk worth telling the community what they have planned ahead of time? What benefit would this early knowledge give you such that the risk is justified or balanced?

As for the player exodus, I think that's a little dramatic. You have your peak and quiet periods, and people take a break and come back later, but the number of registered players continues to grow, as the financial report showed, and you get resurgences in the number of concurrent players when new content is added. It's not only the hardcore fans who remain. Many players who have a number of reservations with the game continue to play and enjoy the game as it is.

Also, this whole "maintenance mode" trope is simply not applicable. Maintenance mode signifies that a game or software project has reached a point where it's considered pretty much completed or finished, and is only being maintained with usually the minimum of fixes and minor tweaking. But for Elite there's a planned major release, and in the lead up to that release there are bug fixes, QoL improvements, BGS fixes and improvements, a new welcoming experience for players starting out, planned periodic development supported events, new assets, and new content and features. If what you know of the interim changes so far doesn't interest or inspire you that's fair enough, but I think stating that the game is in maintenance mode is just a way for people who aren't happy with the current state of affairs to put a doomy spin on things.

I don't like the silence because it indicates that FD don't trust us with that info, and that once upon a time they were an open dev team and now we get a closed door.

I do understand why they've chosen to do take that stance, they don't want an uproar because a certain feature isn't being developed and no matter what they announce there will be an uproar from some faction of the player base, but guess what, they've got an uproar anyway after the non-announcement.

Sure, telling us their plans is a risk, but so is silence and I'd rather deal with an open dev team, one that includes their players in the conversation rather than the 'trust us' it'll be great line. I've heard that before and you know what, it wasn't great, I could list all the features that were poorly developed, half baked and badly implemented...it's a long list.

The flak they're getting from the community is justified IMO, fleet carriers, ice planets were scheduled. They got pulled, that is an issue for some (not me personally, I had no real interest in either) but there was little explanation or any sort of revised timeline, we don't even know if those things will ever be developed because FD have closed the door on a conversation with us.

As for a player exodus, I'm not saying it will happen, I'm saying it could happen. Probably not even an exodus (perhaps a poor choice of word) which indicates a mass movement, perhaps more of a drift or constant trickle...then again maybe not. Given the current situ I don't see players leaving ED as being terribly unrealistic, just my theory.

I agree on maintenance mode, however if you read my post I did specify the next 18 months...not forever. You are right it's for games at the end of their life, apparently that is not the case for ED. However I'm really not inspired by what the next few months will bring, small team, small updates and the list of what they are planning during that time does not interest me in the slightest...well maybe QoL and bug fixes, depending on what that means and which bugs.

I've been playing since beta and on the whole I enjoyed my time, however I really don't like this latest development and the announcement, something feels off about the whole thing...again this is all IMO but you did ask.

Plenty of players will stay, ED will carry on, it's not the end of the game...but it may be the end of the game for many loyal players. For me, I'll play for now because I'm enjoying exploring but I don't think I'll hang around for long, certainly not the next 18 months. I'll check on progress and keep an eye on it, check the forums from time to time and if/when they announce something I'll be watching.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

I don't like the silence because it indicates that FD don't trust us with that info, and that once upon a time they were an open dev team and now we get a closed door.

I do understand why they've chosen to do take that stance, they don't want an uproar because a certain feature isn't being developed and no matter what they announce there will be an uproar from some faction of the player base, but guess what, they've got an uproar anyway after the non-announcement.

Sure, telling us their plans is a risk, but so is silence and I'd rather deal with an open dev team, one that includes their players in the conversation rather than the 'trust us' it'll be great line. I've heard that before and you know what, it wasn't great, I could list all the features that were poorly developed, half baked and badly implemented...it's a long list.

The flak they're getting from the community is justified IMO, fleet carriers, ice planets were scheduled. They got pulled, that is an issue for some (not me personally, I had no real interest in either) but there was little explanation or any sort of revised timeline, we don't even know if those things will ever be developed because FD have closed the door on a conversation with us.

As for a player exodus, I'm not saying it will happen, I'm saying it could happen. Probably not even an exodus (perhaps a poor choice of word) which indicates a mass movement, perhaps more of a drift or constant trickle...then again maybe not. Given the current situ I don't see players leaving ED as being terribly unrealistic, just my theory.

I agree on maintenance mode, however if you read my post I did specify the next 18 months...not forever. You are right it's for games at the end of their life, apparently that is not the case for ED. However I'm really not inspired by what the next few months will bring, small team, small updates and the list of what they are planning during that time does not interest me in the slightest...well maybe QoL and bug fixes, depending on what that means and which bugs.

I've been playing since beta and on the whole I enjoyed my time, however I really don't like this latest development and the announcement, something feels off about the whole thing...again this is all IMO but you did ask.

Plenty of players will stay, ED will carry on, it's not the end of the game...but it may be the end of the game for many loyal players. For me, I'll play for now because I'm enjoying exploring but I don't think I'll hang around for long, certainly not the next 18 months. I'll check on progress and keep an eye on it, check the forums from time to time and if/when they announce something I'll be watching.

Thanks for shedding some light on that.

Ultimately it does end up being a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation for Frontier. Where you say they don't trust the community with early information that may be subject to change, I take that to mean they don't trust that we all have a good grasp of the software development cycle and Frontier's own methodology, and that they don't trust that we'll take any changes to or cancellations of announced development items with understanding and patience. More to the point, they know that a backlash will occur anytime they need to revise something they've announced.

Effectively, with specific regard to upcoming releases and updates, Frontier have reduced the number of complaints against them from potentially a multitude of gripes about what they announce, and any changes to what they announce, to just one complaint about lack of communication. That is until they actually announce what they've confirmed, at which point they'll get complaints from each person who doesn't like a particular item. In short, when it seems like every player wants the game specifically developed for them personally, I don't really blame Frontier for delaying details.

But again, it has me wondering what people think an earlier announcement would actually do for them. Other than just satisfying your curiosity, what is the benefit such that you don't like the silence? Why the uproar?
Frontier has no actual obligation to give out any details before they're prepared to, but even if they did so, it wouldn't make the content come any sooner, and would result in no practical difference compared to announcing details a little later. I can't tell people how to feel, but there doesn't seem to be any justification for being so upset about delays on the details, given that there's no tangible loss or gain with either choice, whilst the delay itself acts as a buffer for changes in Frontier's development plans, and helps in managing expectations.

Also, I don't see a direct correlation between Frontier delaying announcement of the details, and asking players to trust them. Unless they want to move closer to a design by committee development model, they're not beholden to community review of their development plan before moving ahead with it, so there doesn't appear to be any requirement for trust attached to their delaying of the detailed announcement.

 

[Dutchman141]

Do you mean that Frontier have not tried to implement a player retention strategy, or do you mean that you don't agree that the measures they've put in place will be sufficient, or that they're not even needed?
Clearly they've taken steps to try to keep players involved in the lead up to the major release, so I think you might mean one of the latter.

I'd also ask you the same question I asked Urbanski101, as I'm interested to know:

"Why do you care so much about Frontier not divulging the specifics of their development plans ahead of time?

I've been trying to understand why members of the community are sore on this point. Until an update is deployed, the game remains as it is, and you'll either continue to play it or not, knowing what it is and what you can do. Sooner or later, before an update is released, we get the details of what it includes, then you can decide if you want to try out the new stuff or stop playing the game. If you try out the new stuff and like it, you can keep playing, if not you can stop playing.

What actual difference does it make to you if you know what the new content will be now, or closer to when it's released? I mean you specifically, so put aside for a moment the reason that a section of the community is upset by the lack of information early on.

You know that if the details of a development item are published while it's still fluid and subject to change, then a change in that item or a decision to drop or postpone it will cause a lot of players to get upset. People are still going on about Fleet Carriers and Ice Planets. Why is that risk worth telling the community what they have planned ahead of time? What benefit would this early knowledge give you such that the risk is justified or balanced?"

I see what you mean and I partially agree that knowing what they're working at wouldn't actually change anything in regard to how I play the game or not at this time.
It would however increase the involvement of ED's player base, sharing the excitement of what's to come.
I realy like ED and it's the best game I've ever played but imho it needs more substance, not just different tools like we got with the last update, no matter how good those tools are in my opinion.
I'm burned out playing ED and hope it'll get stuff added that will make me want to play it again because it's my number one game.

Fdev is dangling carrots on a stick for quite some time now as if that is enough to keep my hopes up for the future of ED.
Well I'm sorry to say but I can't take their word for it just because they're excited, tell me often enough how excited you are about something without telling me what it is and you lose a lot of credibility in my book.
Fdev made a great hype about the Thargoids too, look how that turned out.
I wouldn't mind knowing if that what's coming in eighteen months is actually as exciting as they make it out to be, not to be critical about it but to be just as excited as they are.
I want to be excited about the future of my favorite game but this carrot on a stick is just that, nothing to be excited about.
If that exciting new era thing turns out to be something I don't like at all then nothing would change either, I would just give up hope for ED a bit sooner.

Rest assured though, I'm not having any sleepless nights over this, I just hope ED will become better then ever and I wouldn't mind getting excited about it's future.
This "something great is coming but we're not gonna tell you what it is but you'll have to wait untill the end of next year" doesn't realy add to the excitement now does it?
I just hope not to many people will lose interest during these eighteen months and leave ED alltogether.
Imho Fdevs way of keeping people involved with the game or them working on it is not something to brag about.
Their secritive behavior is doing rather the opposite and widens the gap between them and their fans only further.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

I see what you mean and I partially agree that knowing what they're working at wouldn't actually change anything in regard to how I play the game or not at this time.
It would however increase the involvement of ED's player base, sharing the excitement of what's to come.
I realy like ED and it's the best game I've ever played but imho it needs more substance, not just different tools like we got with the last update, no matter how good those tools are in my opinion.
I'm burned out playing ED and hope it'll get stuff added that will make me want to play it again because it's my number one game.

Fdev is dangling carrots on a stick for quite some time now as if that is enough to keep my hopes up for the future of ED.
Well I'm sorry to say but I can't take their word for it just because they're excited, tell me often enough how excited you are about something without telling me what it is and you lose a lot of credibility in my book.
Fdev made a great hype about the Thargoids too, look how that turned out.
I wouldn't mind knowing if that what's coming in eighteen months is actually as exciting as they make it out to be, not to be critical about it but to be just as excited as they are.
I want to be excited about the future of my favorite game but this carrot on a stick is just that, nothing to be excited about.
If that exciting new era thing turns out to be something I don't like at all then nothing would change either, I would just give up hope for ED a bit sooner.

Rest assured though, I'm not having any sleepless nights over this, I just hope ED will become better then ever and I wouldn't mind getting excited about it's future.
This "something great is coming but we're not gonna tell you what it is but you'll have to wait untill the end of next year" doesn't realy add to the excitement now does it?
I just hope not to many people will lose interest during these eighteen months and leave ED alltogether.
Imho Fdevs way of keeping people involved with the game or them working on it is not something to brag about.
Their secritive behavior is doing rather the opposite and widens the gap between them and their fans only further.

That's one way to look at it. From my perspective though, Frontier are not yet ready to divulge all the details about their upcoming major release, but rather than keep us waiting for an announcement until they're ready to tell all, they instead decided to let us know that there's a lot coming, some of it soon and some of it later, and give us some ideas about what they have planned in the shorter term at least. I don't see that as Frontier requiring that we take their word that things are gonna be great, but rather Frontier hoping that we wait around a bit to hear more news as their development plan solidifies and they're able to let us know more.

Ultimately, whether we hear soon or late, we'll have plenty of time to decide whether we like what's coming enough to give it a try. As for excitement, speculation can be exciting in a way, and already many players are having fun with that.

You make a good point about being more open about development plans earlier on, in order to have better engagement with the community, but there's a sharp edge to that. Any changes to that plan will invariably result in a torrent of complaints about Frontier not keeping their promises, making bad decisions, or just being crappy developers. That's the sort of engagement I'd try to avoid. If they did announce all the details ahead of time, the community would then start picking apart each change, pushing for modifications to each, asking for some to be removed and others to be added, etc. Worse than that is that what one player wants, another player opposes, so who to listen to? Do they tally up the myriad views on each item before going ahead? Frontier cannot modify their plans based on that type of feedback and still keep to anything resembling a schedule. They would have made their plans based on the feedback they've already reviewed, so even on that point there is no actual engagement with the community in releasing details early, and I don't recommend that as a door they should open.

In the end, they'll either make changes that will increase the number of players or decrease them, regardless of when or how they announce things, and how closely they stick to what they announced.

 

[Ddraig]

In my opinion the issue resides in that people has a low attention span and many will simply go to other games once they do not see much activity in Elite.
Also, Elite has an odd track record of a really inconsistent effectiveness on its releases. Ranging from ok to mediocre content and a plethora of bugs. Granted you cant please everyone, lot of the recent content has been really hit or miss.
I mean, the Mamba still has the landing gear bug.

So, yea it worries me. I don't go all doom and gloom, but I do have the right to be worried about it. So yea, what I expect is a consistent marketing campaign and good communication telling me what is coming so I can be properly hyped about it and keep Elite on my priority list of games.
That is all.

 

[Urbanski101]

Thanks for shedding some light on that.

Ultimately it does end up being a "damned if you do and damned if you don't" situation for Frontier. Where you say they don't trust the community with early information that may be subject to change, I take that to mean they don't trust that we all have a good grasp of the software development cycle and Frontier's own methodology, and that they don't trust that we'll take any changes to or cancellations of announced development items with understanding and patience. More to the point, they know that a backlash will occur anytime they need to revise something they've announced.

Effectively, with specific regard to upcoming releases and updates, Frontier have reduced the number of complaints against them from potentially a multitude of gripes about what they announce, and any changes to what they announce, to just one complaint about lack of communication. That is until they actually announce what they've confirmed, at which point they'll get complaints from each person who doesn't like a particular item. In short, when it seems like every player wants the game specifically developed for them personally, I don't really blame Frontier for delaying details.

But again, it has me wondering what people think an earlier announcement would actually do for them. Other than just satisfying your curiosity, what is the benefit such that you don't like the silence? Why the uproar?
Frontier has no actual obligation to give out any details before they're prepared to, but even if they did so, it wouldn't make the content come any sooner, and would result in no practical difference compared to announcing details a little later. I can't tell people how to feel, but there doesn't seem to be any justification for being so upset about delays on the details, given that there's no tangible loss or gain with either choice, whilst the delay itself acts as a buffer for changes in Frontier's development plans, and helps in managing expectations.

Also, I don't see a direct correlation between Frontier delaying announcement of the details, and asking players to trust them. Unless they want to move closer to a design by committee development model, they're not beholden to community review of their development plan before moving ahead with it, so there doesn't appear to be any requirement for trust attached to their delaying of the detailed announcement.

I suppose I don't like secrecy, I don't like the closed door policy and I'd like to be excited for the new content.

I liked the fact that on release of 1.0 I knew there was a whole year of updates coming, then at the end of that year there was a whole new DLC coming. I really enjoyed the thought that the game was evolving...going somewhere. During that time there were dev diaries, updates, Q&As, the surge of interest from the kickstarter into the full release, it felt like we were on this journey together. I liked that.

A lot of water has passed under that bridge and the situation we have now is very different, we have a polarised community and a developer that won't communicate. It feels like them and us.

The game is in a fairly good place but there are so many bugs and broken mechanics, the size of the dev team working on this version is greatly reduced and I just can't see how they are going to fix or accomplish much under those conditions if they couldn't do it with a full team.

They are asking for our trust yet they do not extend us, the players, that same courtesy or faith.

The faith they want from the players needs to be based on something and looking back, their record has been very hit and miss (by their own admission), that faith has been shaken over the years and you can only be let down a certain number of times before you stop believing altogether.

I appreciate your position on this, I just don't share your opinion, that's fine, it's what this forum is for. I do also appreciate the fact you want to know why we feel that way and I've done my best to explain my thoughts...probably not very well. Thanks for asking, listening and not judging...and I do have hope, as you do, just a little less perhaps. I've a tendency to be cynical which has always been a fault of mine

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

In my opinion the issue resides in that people has a low attention span and many will simply go to other games once they do not see much activity in Elite.
Also, Elite has an odd track record of a really inconsistent effectiveness on its releases. Ranging from ok to mediocre content and a plethora of bugs. Granted you cant please everyone, lot of the recent content has been really hit or miss.
I mean, the Mamba still has the landing gear bug.

So, yea it worries me. I don't go all doom and gloom, but I do have the right to be worried about it. So yea, what I expect is a consistent marketing campaign and good communication telling me what is coming so I can be properly hyped about it and keep Elite on my priority list of games.
That is all.

You make some good points. With the expectation around a consistent marketing campaign and good communication, does that necessitate that all details about a planned release should be provided with the announcement of that release, or is it an acceptable scenario that some span of time is between the two, depending on solidification of the development items pertaining to the release? I ask that because sometimes some consistency may have to be sacrificed for better communication, and vice versa.

 

[Dutchman141]

That's one way to look at it. From my perspective though, Frontier are not yet ready to divulge all the details about their upcoming major release, but rather than keep us waiting for an announcement until they're ready to tell all, they instead decided to let us know that there's a lot coming, some of it soon and some of it later, and give us some ideas about what they have planned in the shorter term at least. I don't see that as Frontier requiring that we take their word that things are gonna be great, but rather Frontier hoping that we wait around a bit to hear more news as their development plan solidifies and they're able to let us know more.

Ultimately, whether we hear soon or late, we'll have plenty of time to decide whether we like what's coming enough to give it a try. As for excitement, speculation can be exciting in a way, and already many players are having fun with that.

You make a good point about being more open about development plans earlier on, in order to have better engagement with the community, but there's a sharp edge to that. Any changes to that plan will invariably result in a torrent of complaints about Frontier not keeping their promises, making bad decisions, or just being crappy developers. That's the sort of engagement I'd try to avoid. If they did announce all the details ahead of time, the community would then start picking apart each change, pushing for modifications to each, asking for some to be removed and others to be added, etc. Worse than that is that what one player wants, another player opposes, so who to listen to? Do they tally up the myriad views on each item before going ahead? Frontier cannot modify their plans based on that type of feedback and still keep to anything resembling a schedule. They would have made their plans based on the feedback they've already reviewed, so even on that point there is no actual engagement with the community in releasing details early, and I don't recommend that as a door they should open.

In the end, they'll either make changes that will increase the number of players or decrease them, regardless of when or how they announce things, and how closely they stick to what they announced.

They may not be ready to share anything yet, okay.
They shouldn't have started with dangling that carrot last year already.
We've been told numerous times by now that something exciting, a new era even, is coming. Statments like that with nothing substantial to back it up is just dust in the wind, the only thing it can do is fly right in your eye which is iritating.
Just now they told us that this dust isn't taking shape untill late next year, imho this isn't a very encouraging message n'or something to get excited about.

LGM is coming with a new Starpoint Gemini game, date is still unknown, but they're already giving out teasers, teasers that get people excited for more of what they already got from this developer.
LGM isn't revealing all ins and outs, neither do they form a committee with the community, all they do is get people excited with them over what's coming and the playerbase love them for it.

Of course there will be people who will complain about what's coming, that's inevitable, but imho the majority of people here on the forums come here and vent their feelings or opinions because they realy like ED and what Fdev made of it so far.
I think it would greatly contribute to the community's involvement and sympathy towards Fdev if they were more open.
They can try to minimize criticism like they do now or try to win some hearts, there will always be complainers, loyal fans often never return once they're gone.

 

[Conde]

I'ts very simple to understand FD's huge mistake not in involving the community with this supposedly game changing 2020 update....it's called motivation.

Supposing President John F. Kennedy in his famous speech 12th September 1962 had said this: "....We choose to go somewhere in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too."

I doubt we would be marking the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's "One Small Step..." because no one outside a select few would have known what the hell was going on. Sound familiar?

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

They may not be ready to share anything yet, okay.
They shouldn't have started with dangling that carrot last year already.
We've been told numerous times by now that something exciting, a new era even, is coming. Statments like that with nothing substantial to back it up is just dust in the wind, the only thing it can do is fly right in your eye which is iritating.
Just now they told us that this dust isn't taking shape untill late next year, imho this isn't a very encouraging message n'or something to get excited about.

LGM is coming with a new Starpoint Gemini game, date is still unknown, but they're already giving out teasers, teasers that get people excited for more of what they already got from this developer.
LGM isn't revealing all ins and outs, neither do they form a committee with the community, all they do is get people excited with them over what's coming and the playerbase love them for it.

Of course there will be people who will complain about what's coming, that's inevitable, but imho the majority of people here on the forums come here and vent their feelings or opinions because they realy like ED and what Fdev made of it so far.
I think it would greatly contribute to the community's involvement and sympathy towards Fdev if they were more open.
They can try to minimize criticism like they do now or try to win some hearts, there will always be complainers, loyal fans often never return once they're gone.

I think if they're not ready to announce firm plans yet, they should at least let players know that something is actually in the works, otherwise you get the doomsayers predicting maintenance mode and the final end for Elite very quickly.
If they announced something last year with a view to have something ready for release this year, and then they decided to expand the scope of that release such that the release date needs to be pushed back to Q2 2020, I can see how some people might find that irritating, but mostly because it means they have to wait longer, and not so much because plans at Frontier appear to have changed. But to me, and many other players it seems, the fact that this long extension is required for what has been described as an ambitious update is something to get excited about, and the mystery surrounding it can make it more so for a while. Couple that with improvements and additions scheduled in the meantime, and it provides some shorter term things to look forward to while you wait, if you like following the progress of the game. Again, it just depends on your perspective.

So I guess my question to you now is, given that development plans have clearly changed at Frontier, which has pushed back the release date significantly, how much time do you think is reasonable between the announcement of the release, and an announcement with some more specific details about what the release will include?

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

I'ts very simple to understand FD's huge mistake not in involving the community with this supposedly game changing 2020 update....it's called motivation.

Supposing President John F. Kennedy in his famous speech 12th September 1962 had said this: "....We choose to go somewhere in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too."

I doubt we would be marking the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's "One Small Step..." because no one outside a select few would have known what the hell was going on. Sound familiar?

By "not involving the community", do you simply mean not telling the community all the details about what's included in the next major release at the time of the announcement? If so, why do you believe the two must coincide, and that details coming over time as the development solidifies is not an acceptable method of communicating information? At the least, we'd have more accurate and consistent information this way.

Also, what do you mean by motivation preventing Frontier from divulging all details about their current development plans at once? Have you considered that not all specifics have been finalised, and that some development items remain fluid and subject to change, while others have dependencies on the completion of different development items which may themselves be changed or dropped? People tend to get upset when something they're told does not materialise, and that has caused backlash in the past, even as recently as the omitted or postponed Ice Planets and Fleet Carriers.

I think that people who want all the information now tend to place that desire over Frontier's responsibility to weigh the impact on the community and their reputation from either telling all now and then having to deal with complaints if some items are changed or dropped, or giving out information over time and having to deal with complaints about poor communication. Either could be considered a mistake on the basis that the community is upset by them, so it's very simple to understand why Frontier chooses the option that allows it some buffer for its development decisions, and allows it to appear more consistent with its announcements.

 

[Conde]

I mean FD not motivating the community to have a healthy and active participation in the desired end goal. A goal that could be made far better by trusting their paying customers with that information using the miilions of hours of knowledge and experience we have accumulated over the last 5 years.


Let's face it, the Cobra graphics engine they use looks pretty poor by 2020 standards, by which time it will be at least 8 years old. Yes we get pretty vistas thanks to our explorer brethren boldly going... but the textures and geometry look very dated now despite recent tweaks.

Therefore I speculate we will get the Elephant in the room, Elite Dangerous 2 complete with atmospheric landings etc. with a game engine fit for the next decade.

I also speculate that although we will all have to pay for it, existing players can port their accounts to the new game with perhaps a few sweeteners thrown in.

 

[Lightspeed]

I do hope FD don't do the "reveal to a select few and silence them with a NDA" thing again, hoping they will dutifully tell everyone 'we've seen wonderful things.' That is not a substitute for holding loyal players with hints, peeks, and other encouraging disclosures about progress.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

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.

Space Madness.