Elite: Dangerous is seriously underrated

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
No Offense to you or your Definition.
But World of Warcraft is doing far better in the World Building as well. Its offering a far Superior World to ED.
But that doesnt make World of Warcraft into a Competition for Elite Dangerous.

No offense taken of course! :)

Please notice I never mentioned WoW in my post. A game is often more in competition with a certain number of related games (closer to it in theme or features etc) than with others (not so close to it). WoW competes with Elite in a few elements indeed (open world, MMO etc) but there are many other games (usually space theme related) that compete much more directly with Elite than WoW. Competition is not a binary thing, it has lots of tons of degrees in between extremes.

At one side of the extreme of potential competitors for Elite would be a game that has all the key features that make Elite, Elite. As you said before "the Niche where Elite Dangerous is Sitting". But that game does not really exist yet, or very few games can really claim to be close enough, maybe NMS. The thing with this extreme is that by definition there is going to be always close to zero competition because Elite is pretty unique. So going to this extreme is quite moot and useless.

At the other extreme of potential competitors we have... pretty much any other game that has zero, nothing, to do with space and with any kind of space game usual themes, such as Pong, Counter Strike, League of Legends... Even at this extreme, technically, any game compete with all the other games obviously. After all they are all games. But I hope you will agree with me that trying to use this as reference for competition is also quite moot and useless.

The real and actual competition for Elite worth discussing seats somewhere in between those two extremes, closer to those games that have some common denominators (themes or features etc) with Elite that players value (be it space theme in general, or space ship cockpit simulation, or ship pew-pew, space exploration, futuristic open world, etc). From the moment a group of these elements is shared there is going to be competition between those games for the time and money of those players.

And you can see players decisions about that almost every day in this forum, in reddit etc, as proof of that very real competition.

Games like EVE, NMS, Space Engineers, Kerbal, Astroneer, Evochron, Hellion. Even non game software like Space Engine or projects of games in development such as Star Citizen are already competing with Elite for some of the same players time and money (almost 300 million dollars there suggest as much).

I do hope. That FDev Follows Development of other Games closely. Because maybe they will learn something from it.
But thats not the Point.

But that is the point precisely :D If those games I mentioned above do not offer competition to Elite there would not really be much need in FDEV learning from them. It would be like following Pong or Candy Crush or Hearthstone or Hearts of Iron... No need at all (or very little). FDEV could just continue trodding along waiting for the real competition to appear and only then follow it to learn from it to compete.

See, when you say that you think FDEV can learn something from those games what you are implying necessarily is that there is competition already.

:)

The competition on partial feature sets coming from those games (some more than others) is very real for Elite and FDEV. You do not need the full monty for competition to exist.

If there a single line I would recommend you take from all this is that competition game to game, is not a binary thing, it is not a simple "yes or no". There is a multitude of degrees of grey in between the extremes just with partial feature sets in common.
 
Last edited:
I love any kind of space game, and ED holds my interest. The pros far outweigh the cons for me. I also love Star Trek and have played STO off and on since it's release. I got bored with STO and every, single, mission, requiring me to shoot at someone, or someone to shoot at me. Seriously, I am in a Science vessel, I want to do science stuff, not get shot at ALL the time. Geez, don't think that happened as much in the various movies and series.

In ED, I can choose if I want to shoot at someone, or vice versa. Or, go on a long exploration journey, where the only risk comes from the one at the controls. Amongst others. I enjoy the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want in ED. I have yet to encounter another space sim that offers me this. I have never played NMS or SC, and have no desire to. I am sure that they have their target audience, but that ain't me.

Love Elite, hate it, whatever, I will still tool around the galaxy checking out the sites, procedurally generated or not.
 
No offense taken of course! :)

Please notice I never mentioned WoW in my post. A game is often more in competition with a certain number of related games (closer to it in theme or features etc) than with others (not so close to it). WoW competes with Elite in a few elements indeed (open world, MMO etc) but there are many other games (usually space theme related) that compete much more directly with Elite. Competition is not a binary thing, it has lots of tons of degrees in between extremes.

At one side of the extreme of potential competitors for Elite would be a game that has all the key features that make Elite, Elite. As you said before "the Niche where Elite Dangerous is Sitting". But that game does not really exist yet, or very few games can really claim to be close enough, maybe NMS. The thing with this extreme is that by definition there is going to be always close to zero competition because Elite is pretty unique. So going to this extreme is quite moot and useless.

At the other extreme of potential competitors we have... pretty much any other game that has zero, nothing, to do with space and with any kind of space game usual themes, such as Pong, Counter Strike, League of Legends... Even at this extreme, technically, any game compete with all the other games obviously. After all they are all games. But I hope you will agree with me that trying to use this as reference for competition is also quite moot and useless.

The real and actual competition for Elite worth discussing seats somewhere in between those two extremes, closer to those games that have some common denominators (themes or features etc) with Elite that players value (be it space theme in general, or space ship cockpit simulation, or ship pew-pew, space exploration, futuristic open world, etc). From the moment a group of these elements is shared there is going to be competition between those games for the time and money of those players.

And you can see players decisions about that almost every day in this forum, in reddit etc, as proof of that very real competition.

Games like EVE, NMS, Space Engineers, Kerbal, Astroneer, Evochron, Hellion. Even non game software like Space Engine or projects of games in development such as Star Citizen are already competing with Elite for some of the same players time and money (almost 300 million dollars there suggest as much).



But that is the point precisely :D If those games I mentioned above do not offer competition to Elite there would not really be much need in FDEV learning from them. It would be like following Pong or Candy Crush or Hearthstone or Hearts of Iron... No need at all (or very little). FDEV could just continue trodding along waiting for the real competition to appear and only then follow it to learn from it to compete.

See, when you say that you think FDEV can learn something from those games what you are implying necessarily is that there is competition already.

:)

The competition on partial feature sets coming from those games (some more than others) is very real for Elite and FDEV.

If there a single line I would recommend you take from all this is that competition game to game, is not a binary thing, it is not a simple "yes or no". There is a multitude of degrees of grey in between the extremes just with partial feature sets in common.
Your reply got me thinking, that's why I'm replying just now. At first I wanted to take the stance that ED doesn't have any real competition even when reduced to its 2 most important attributes: a sandbox first person space sim. But... A sandbox first person space sim is not a hammer or a toothbrush, it's a computer game. When I need a hammer, a saw or a screwdriver are not competitors to hammers, because I need a bleeding hammer. But if one computer game doesn't satisfy me for whatever personal reasons, any other computer game can potentially satisfy me for whatever random personal reasons. And you're correct: any game is a potential competition to ED and this discussion is futile. :ROFLMAO:
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
And you're correct: any game is a potential competition to ED and this discussion is futile. :ROFLMAO:

Hehe, technically correct, but as I mentioned I think some games compete better/more with Elite than others. Again, remember not to look at this as a binary porposition. Lots of shades of grey! :p
 
Hehe, technically correct, but as I mentioned I think some games compete better/more with Elite than others. Again, remember not to look at this as a binary porposition. Lots of shades of grey! :p
There are 2 groups of gamers: those that divide gamers into groups... Oh, wait... There are 2 groups of gamers: mono and multi gamers. For mono gamers it's either-or: either they find a game interesting and play only that game or move to another game. To them us it's black or white, but for people that can play more games, the world has many shades of grey. ;)
 
It isn't. Most of their revenue is from new sales. I'd say that's the main reason why are they focused so much on easing the experience for new players and probably because player retention is not so stellar.
Allow me to rephrase then. The revenue Elite Dangerous gets from non new players, those players that have horizons and the game already. Let's be honest here, ED doesn't have a big playerbase. This mostly due to it's niche ish style and not much marketing ( see no ads for Elite Danerous while i constantly get them for EVE, No Mans sky and the likes). Hence the most revenue they get apart from those one time purchases is the cosmetics.
 
Allow me to rephrase then. The revenue Elite Dangerous gets from non new players, those players that have horizons and the game already. Let's be honest here, ED doesn't have a big playerbase. This mostly due to it's niche ish style and not much marketing ( see no ads for Elite Danerous while i constantly get them for EVE, No Mans sky and the likes). Hence the most revenue they get apart from those one time purchases is the cosmetics.
Then please allow me to repeat myself in greater detail, backed up with numbers.
ED generated £19M, £21M, £16M and £22M in each year since the release. Those numbers show sustained influx of new players.
From £22M only £4M came from their webstore sales and not only from the game extras (cosmetics as you say), but from the merchandise as well.

Also, having low playerbase means only big growth potential, which is proven by the sustained revenue generation in each year.
If you haven't seen any marketing, that doesn't mean that the marketing doesn't exist. Price promotions are an effective sales tool.

Now tell me again how cosmetics generate the most revenue.
 
I just grabbed Everspace for PS4 for $6. After about 10 minutes of gameplay, I turned it off and fired up ED. While Everspace sorta has 6DoF, the flight controls are just meh, especially compared to ED. I'm a bit disappointed, because I like games that follow a story line, but if it's not fun to fly, then it's not fun.

I didn't join the Everspace forum and complain. I'm just going to move it to my external drive and be thankful I only lost $6 in this experiment. People say, "If you don't like it, don't play it." which is exactly what I do with 99% of games I have problems with. This means that if I do join a forum and complain about a game, I must really love that game. 🥰
 
ED is a low-brow arcade game, incapable of any kind of basic space flight. No ship in ED - even "fully engineered" (cough ahem) - could replicate any real mission that's ever flown since Sputnik.

In the absence of any basic freedom to control one's own ship, the devs have substituted in an arcade mini-game they call "FA-off", purely to provide some kind of 'skill' to practice in place of any basic practical 'spaceflight' controls.

ED fans are generally incapable of understanding that there are six degrees of freedom, and that 'spaceflight' is principally concerned with controlling (ie. "piloting") motion in all three spatial planes - that freedom of linear motion is kind of the defining principle of 'spaceflight' - the whole point (much less fun) of any such skills are completely beyond them. They do know from sci-fi tropes however that in space everything happens in slo-mo, and objects without angular stability control tend to tumble, hence they're all delighted and enchanted with the much-more spacey-feeling task of controlling their ship in the angular axes instead; for linear motion there's always airbrake mo- i mean, 'supercruise'.

ED could be the beginnings of an awesome game if only it allowed pilots to control their own ships - to literally fly them in any way they please - whilst respecting the basic principles of motion.. but at present it doesn't do either of these things..
 
As an answer to the title of this thread my personal opinion is that ED is seriously overrated instead of underrated.
I think the problem is that ED is practically the only game in it's kind, there's no competition.
Although ED has a lot of oooh and aaah stuff like it's visuals, huge galaxy to play in and very cool ships, the actual gameplay is mediocre at best.
Most things you can do are only half developed or have no impact on the game or player at all.
Then there's the multitude of very old and newer bugs, imbalances, etc.

Imho ED is definitely not underrated, it profits from the fact that there's no competition so a lot of people take it's flaws for granted and call it an underrated game, personally I think it's overrated though.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
As an answer to the title of this thread my personal opinion is that ED is seriously overrated instead of underrated.
I think the problem is that ED is practically the only game in it's kind, there's no competition.
Although ED has a lot of oooh and aaah stuff like it's visuals, huge galaxy to play in and very cool ships, the actual gameplay is mediocre at best.
Most things you can do are only half developed or have no impact on the game or player at all.
Then there's the multitude of very old and newer bugs, imbalances, etc.

Imho ED is definitely not underrated, it profits from the fact that there's no competition so a lot of people take it's flaws for granted and call it an underrated game, personally I think it's overrated though.

Elite does have plenty of competition though.
 

Viajero

Volunteer Moderator
In the space game genre?
Personally I don't see NMS or SC as competition.
Sure there are enough games out there but afaik not that look like ED.

Yeah, but you do not really need games that look like ED for competition to exist. SC and NMS are indeed competition for Elite, just a couple examples among many other games that compete quite closely with ED for players time and money.
 
Then please allow me to repeat myself in greater detail, backed up with numbers.
ED generated £19M, £21M, £16M and £22M in each year since the release. Those numbers show sustained influx of new players.
From £22M only £4M came from their webstore sales and not only from the game extras (cosmetics as you say), but from the merchandise as well.

Also, having low playerbase means only big growth potential, which is proven by the sustained revenue generation in each year.
If you haven't seen any marketing, that doesn't mean that the marketing doesn't exist. Price promotions are an effective sales tool.

Now tell me again how cosmetics generate the most revenue.
Alright you have a point. The revenue thing was mainly based on info given to me by players of ED so i'll keep it in mind ^^
However the 4M from revenue then also shows a big problem in ED itself. If the cosmetics are that little of the whole picture then why is everything RL money only? It would make sense to boost sales from the cosmetics with free parts because instead of feeling 'the store is money only, how greedy' the players will think more along the lines of 'i can buy this with credits but.... these better looking skins i can buy with a quick purchase' or at least that's how i look at MTS systems myself.
 
Alright you have a point. The revenue thing was mainly based on info given to me by players of ED so i'll keep it in mind ^^
However the 4M from revenue then also shows a big problem in ED itself. If the cosmetics are that little of the whole picture then why is everything RL money only? It would make sense to boost sales from the cosmetics with free parts because instead of feeling 'the store is money only, how greedy' the players will think more along the lines of 'i can buy this with credits but.... these better looking skins i can buy with a quick purchase' or at least that's how i look at MTS systems myself.
That couldn’t happen because people have already paid for things you suggest should be given away free.
 
Alright you have a point. The revenue thing was mainly based on info given to me by players of ED so i'll keep it in mind ^^
However the 4M from revenue then also shows a big problem in ED itself. If the cosmetics are that little of the whole picture then why is everything RL money only? It would make sense to boost sales from the cosmetics with free parts because instead of feeling 'the store is money only, how greedy' the players will think more along the lines of 'i can buy this with credits but.... these better looking skins i can buy with a quick purchase' or at least that's how i look at MTS systems myself.
You have some free stuff in the store, but maybe not many know about them.
The revenue varies from platform to platform, and is "...as high as 30% on some platforms" (ED CFO).
Don't forget that ED isn't the biggest and the only revenue generator for FD. If you take a look at their plans, they plan on releasing at least one new franchise each year, so obviously they don't see game extras as an important revenue generator.

As you heard from other players (and I will tell you the same), we are ready to spend on cosmetics, but what's currently being offered is so meh. Try searching the forum for paintjobs and you'll find many posts in which people complain about variety or quality.
 
While earlier in the thread I agree with ED being underrated, and I maintain that in some regards, I'll also say it is highly overrated, at least by many in this forum.

I finally got Red Dead Redemption 2 for my humble PS4 Slim, and holy cow mother of impressive graphics does it look good! All you loons saying "ED needs a PC to have decent graphics because it's so demanding" are wrong. Well technically you're right, but this is not something to take pride in, but rather to be ashamed of. RDR2 looks freaking AMAZING on my PS4. I'm not just talking shadows, but draw distance, reflections, volumetric wind-driven fog and mist with godrays (which supposedly requires a high-end PC to pull off in ED), antialiasing, physics, etc.

I could also compare the game itself to ED, but I think the genres are different enough that such a comparison might not be fair. That's why I'm comparing presentation to presentation, and ED really is overrated when it comes to graphical presentation. Even the sound department is overrated. I'm not saying the sound is bad, it's great. But so is the sound in many games. The sound and "voice comms" in RDR2 is spectacular, so saying ED has the best sound department in the industry is highly exaggerated.

One area ED does excel on the console is customization of controls and use of things like gyroscopic headlook. No other game I own has this flexibility, and whoever originally ported ED to console controllers (particularly the Dualshock for PS4) deserves a trophy.

Now if you think I'm just shredding ED with nothing good to say, see my previous posts to this thread. I'm just bringing some balance to the argument.
 
Top Bottom