Steam Numbers Now
- Thread starter Old Duck
- Start date
Which is complicated even further since "afterwards" is a moving target. I loved the game when it first released on PS4, but the game I have today is radically different than the game I paid for two years ago. Some things have gotten better, but many things have gotten worse (especially the bugs).
When people say "what are you implying?" I guess it often has an aggressive subtext.
That wasn't intended here.
I was just wondering why you brought up the length of time people have been playing.
Personally, I get the impression (from this forum) that ED is one of those games that people do play for thousands of hours unless something changes dramatically.
Course, that, in itself, could be the result of artificial bias.
Hanging around this forum is kind of like hanging around a donut shop and concluding that everybody must be a cop.
Maybe this forum isn't representational of ED's real player-base?
Honestly, I think it'd kind of be a shame if you were right.
ED has great potential for long-term co-op gameplay but a lot of that falls apart if people are only going to play for a couple of hundred hours and then move onto something else.
I mean, you could meet up with somebody, have some yucks but then toddling off to Colonia for a couple of months, just to unlock the engineers there, would apparently be long enough that your new-found buddy has given up and moved on to a different game.
Again, I get the impression (again, from this forum) that ED is one of those games where people - especially people who've made the effort to complete things like unlocking engineers or fed/imp ships - accept this game takes a while to get anywhere in.
Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
Just "a couple of hundred hours" ?
Maybe just me but I think that is a seriously big lot! Also, it is important to remember the life cycle, some players leave, others come back, or join new, the co-op elements continue. Does not need the exact same players to exist.
Steam numbers are quite decent currently, but I expect them to continue to decline (with the occasional bump with each minor update) until summer 2020. At that point I suspect PR will start to ramp up about the 'next era' thingy, combined with Steam Sales to get people into the base game as cheap as possible (I expect ED + Horizons for 5-10 quid). The release of 'next era' should result in the highest peak ever for ED, and what happens next depends on whether it is actually any good.
Well, if the track record is any indication, they will:
(1) generate hype (Woo-hoo! ED is finally getting what just about every other space game already has!)
(2) not play-test it, at all ("that bunch of code looks big and complex, send it through").
(3) start a beta (test) as a mere marketing ploy (not actually beta-testing anything, and fixing nothing - although possibly curtailing anything fun and useful).
(4) release the live version full of game-breaking bugs (and I don't mean the Thargoids).
(5) refuse to fix anything except what benefits the players, which will be near instantly nerfed.
(6) act as if all the bugs are actually features working as intended.
(7) go silent after the player base outrage grows beyond their ability to control.
This is their track record so far...
I don't care, I'm having fun and will no doubt entertain myself with what comes next. You?
I have four horses stabled away on my Cyclops submarine. Wait, I'm getting all my games mixed up!
PS: 4 horses = doom
Why yes, actually. But then I'm playing NMS lately.
Everything interesting about Elite Dangerous has been taken away from me by FDev.
Natural progress.
Meanwhile, we get game mechanics from FDev like:
300 Ls from station. Lined up perfectly with mouth of station.
30 Ls from station. Lined up perfectly with mouth of station.
3 Ls from station. Lined up perfectly with mouth of station.
3 Mm from station. Lined up perfectly with mouth of station.
Drop to real space. 30% off from the mouth of the station.
Cursing begins.
And THAT, is a symbol of all that FDev is.
Looking at the Steam Charts: Game lost in February and March 2019, gained back a part caused by the April update, and probably will soon loose players again. At this time there is no gain and no loss. I think the 3-4 months updates, if they manage to do it will avoid a too great loss until the end of 2019, and then it depends on other games if they can hold the players until the 2020 update. And it depends on what the 2020 update will bring.
I do not think the outlook is bad. ED will have its players as long as it is maintained.
For me personally - outlook is unclear. I just do not know. At this time I am in a prolonged game pause, since I cannot motivate me to play more. I stopped when they killed the FSS, and have not played since then, and so I do not know if it is fixed now. I should be fixed after the patch 2. But every time I think about things to do the reported bugs and problems, the nerfs and 'adjustments' kill my motivation rather fast. I had intended to buy a Phyton and try trading, especially rare goods. But reading the posts here the rare goods trade is no longer very profitable - and I am not talking about '10 Millions a hour' schemes. So maybe mining - but I am not very interested to be honest. Fighting, bounty hunting - would be possible, but I do not love this game play, I can fight a bit and my ships are not defenseless, but still...
Exploring becomes old after a time, since there is not much to find out there. I have Elite in exploring, and have around 20-30 completely new systems discovered, and partially mapped. Now I read that neither the Codex nor the naming for the Discoveries seems to work dependable. What sense does it make then?
The Engineers - well mostly a PITA to be honest. I have only 3, and every time I look how to use one of them I am missing materials, and not for grade 5, no sometimes I cannot even do a grade 1 mod. I have now 816 data materials and 4110 other materials (raw and manufactured). It is not that I do not look, but I still have never seen a lot of materials, some of them 'Standard' or even less. I know all the schemes and recipes (Davs Hope &Co), but no real motivation to use them. Material traders - rather no, I will not fly around senseless for hours to collect materials (a PITA in itself) and then loose them 3:1 or 6:1 at these traders.
I have all the Guardian Modules, but not yet 'brokered' the PP and the PD, since - you guess it - I am missing materials, and not Guardian materials, I have more than enough, but I am missing something which is not rare, but have never seen it in game. So no PP or PD for me, no great loss I think.
Fact is, as a rather new player (4 months) you loose motivation rather fast, because nearly all others (except other new players) have tons of things, all Engineers and so on. And this is not very motivating, especially if nothing comes after this. Whereever you look to try something, you run into walls of grind...
I have now over 500 millions credits - and no wish to buy a new ship. I have a Viper MK4 and a DBX, and two small ships. The DBX is engineered enough, the Viper is not. The small ships are not engineered. Normally - judging from the posts here - I should take the next steps, with an ASPX or an Python, or both. But then the engineering grind starts anew. So better not...
But I am sure I will come back, and then again go out to explore. I have nearly 100% Fed reputation, but cannot bring myself to fly around senseless and look for the 'graduation missions' - so no rank for me yet. I am not sure if I even want it. If they want to lock up the Sol System, well be happy with it. I really HATE the walls of grind erected before everything in this game...
I do not think the outlook is bad. ED will have its players as long as it is maintained.
For me personally - outlook is unclear. I just do not know. At this time I am in a prolonged game pause, since I cannot motivate me to play more. I stopped when they killed the FSS, and have not played since then, and so I do not know if it is fixed now. I should be fixed after the patch 2. But every time I think about things to do the reported bugs and problems, the nerfs and 'adjustments' kill my motivation rather fast. I had intended to buy a Phyton and try trading, especially rare goods. But reading the posts here the rare goods trade is no longer very profitable - and I am not talking about '10 Millions a hour' schemes. So maybe mining - but I am not very interested to be honest. Fighting, bounty hunting - would be possible, but I do not love this game play, I can fight a bit and my ships are not defenseless, but still...
Exploring becomes old after a time, since there is not much to find out there. I have Elite in exploring, and have around 20-30 completely new systems discovered, and partially mapped. Now I read that neither the Codex nor the naming for the Discoveries seems to work dependable. What sense does it make then?
The Engineers - well mostly a PITA to be honest. I have only 3, and every time I look how to use one of them I am missing materials, and not for grade 5, no sometimes I cannot even do a grade 1 mod. I have now 816 data materials and 4110 other materials (raw and manufactured). It is not that I do not look, but I still have never seen a lot of materials, some of them 'Standard' or even less. I know all the schemes and recipes (Davs Hope &Co), but no real motivation to use them. Material traders - rather no, I will not fly around senseless for hours to collect materials (a PITA in itself) and then loose them 3:1 or 6:1 at these traders.
I have all the Guardian Modules, but not yet 'brokered' the PP and the PD, since - you guess it - I am missing materials, and not Guardian materials, I have more than enough, but I am missing something which is not rare, but have never seen it in game. So no PP or PD for me, no great loss I think.
Fact is, as a rather new player (4 months) you loose motivation rather fast, because nearly all others (except other new players) have tons of things, all Engineers and so on. And this is not very motivating, especially if nothing comes after this. Whereever you look to try something, you run into walls of grind...
I have now over 500 millions credits - and no wish to buy a new ship. I have a Viper MK4 and a DBX, and two small ships. The DBX is engineered enough, the Viper is not. The small ships are not engineered. Normally - judging from the posts here - I should take the next steps, with an ASPX or an Python, or both. But then the engineering grind starts anew. So better not...
But I am sure I will come back, and then again go out to explore. I have nearly 100% Fed reputation, but cannot bring myself to fly around senseless and look for the 'graduation missions' - so no rank for me yet. I am not sure if I even want it. If they want to lock up the Sol System, well be happy with it. I really HATE the walls of grind erected before everything in this game...
4 horses = apocalypseI have four horses stabled away on my Cyclops submarine. Wait, I'm getting all my games mixed up!
PS: 4 horses = doom
Okay. Enjoy NMS!
The 3D hologram of the targeted item isn't centred, just as the equivalent hologram of your ship on the right isn't.
Look at the angle you see your own ship from (slightly above & to one side), you need to match the station entrance hologram to that same slightly above & to one side view to line up perfectly.
There is a lot that is questionable about the game, and I generally think you have a good point but this is not a good example. Multi-crew, the lack of any meaning to PvP, the mass-lock stats, the Krait MkII's power distributor, having to zero throttle to enter the FSS Scanner Screen without restriction on actual speed, all of these would be good examples, there are many more.
As much as i rattle on around here, id have say that i probably would recommend elite. I'm still playing it to be honest, and there's heaps of other games in the steam pile. etc. Only got about 10 hours into rdr2 also..
Frontier developments are a different story however. Their actual product output is so far different from their public image the only role that comes up is to make the two a bit closer. Hence i probably sound like a troll because they are really full of themselves.
Maybe the ecosystem will come whole again one day. We'll have to wait and see, as until we start creating the game, its their performance and our patronage. Also lol to the people who like to pretend they're frontier when they're not
a couple of 100 hours?
newbs
newbs
What is with the mk2 PD?
I wish people would understand that just because they are not having fun with a game anymore that it does not mean everyone is no longer having fun.
it's pretty obvious that 'some' are having fun, as much as it is obvious that many of the usual faces have gone elsewhere, and the game is certainly not a first choice for a lot of the past players.
Personally, I thin Elite is a fantastically rich game, graphically, ruined by the multitude of bugs that have failed to be addressed, the constant releasing of even more bugs and the sever lack of any form of information that may make me sit up and be interested.
The fact that they [fdev] decided to go on a two year hiatus, with no indication of what if anything they may be working on, leaves me with only one impression; Elite is in maintenance mode. And whatever their new IP is, is getting all the attention.
No doubt, we'll hear some waffle from the usual FDev talking heads in streams etc about what is coming down the road in some vain hope to stifle the yawns of the many now, disillusioned with the game.
What bugs are you talking about? Can you be specific? Because I have played all week long with no issues.
Also do you have any proof that Elite is in "Maintenence Mode" or are you just pulling that out of your butt? Because the Devs have been rather clear that they have a major update coming out next year and that is what they are currently working on.