Have we been lied to?

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pretty much this, with a caveat: crowdsourcing imo implies a certain level of compromise and dedication. they did have time to develop 2 other full games in the meantime. while they have the freedom to do so and the kickstart didn't provide the full funding of the game i can't help but see this as being fundamentally dishonest with kickstarter backers. note i'm not one of those so this aint my battle. :)

That's a key factor here IMHO.

After the initial success during ELITE's first early years, they naturally secured increased finances.

That money they used to divert (from an ELITE Backer's perspective) resources into new IPs they developed.
While this was healthy for the company as a whole and good business - it considerably detracted from ELITE's Development speed.
We entered "the great slowdown" which often was like Maintenance Mode, to a point where even bugfixing suffered and even Betas were dropped eventually. With poor results and left with what felt like glacier-paced progress.

Combined with "the great Silence" (extreme lack of Communications, lack of RoadMap etc.), this IMHO dragged the whole thing down severely.

It was discussed and argued over alot of times, so that 'horse has left the Airlock after the ceremony and a salute' so to speak. No point in bashing that distant Signal Source again.
It's easily a three-edged sword, good business on one side but an at times neglected ELITE Development that paid the price for the "big picture" success of FDev.
The 3rd side : the success allows for cool/new things to happen - but there's no guarantee that'll be ELITE-related. Could be another IP just as well.
 
hmmmm, personally I don't see any promises broken, looking at what was said in the past it's obviously more "what we plan to do" rather than "what we promise to do".....there is a big difference. It's the same as NMS "lies" IMO. So anyone who thinks David didn't lie but Sean did is a hypocrite.

In short "Dev speak" is often not what we end up with in ANY game. There's been more than a few train wrecks too, Daikatana, Duke Nukem Forever, Aliens:Colonial Marines.
 
That would be the useless mechanic ever.
Oh I don’t know, having recently watched one of the new episodes of Lost In Space there’s a bit that’s essentially fuel scooping in a gas giant and all I could think was “I’ll have me a slice of that, please.”

Give it a jump boost like from Neutron Stars, perhaps even jump boosts until you’ve emptied your fuel tank, and you’ve got a gameplay reason to do it. Personally, I’d do it because it looks coooool :)
 
You must be the only one who likes that 'Pay To Lose' Ship.

Seriously I understand why the Cobra IV is so underwhelming, can you imagine the Salt if that ship was Better than the MK III? The accusations of Pay to Win would never stop.

He never said he loves to use it. :p

Maybe it's just the fact that he has something that others can't have or most like just the endless potential of entertaining/salty threads it can create.
 
It seems like you haven't played ED when it was first released in December 2014. It has greatly evolved and improved. During the Beyond series of updates the devs reworked many core gameplay mechanics such as exploration and mining. Free updates in 2019 made ED more user-friendly for new players.

I can testify to that. I am one of the latest wave of new players who jumped on at the Winter/Christmas sale. The startup was flawless and the only real snag I have hit is the games absolute opaqueness as regards to 'Meta-alloys', which is more or less a clue that is impossible to solve on your own as a newbie. But right up to that point, the game did a fine job of introducing you to the mechanics and your options. The Pilot Federation kindergarten is a wonderful thing.

Now I am 60 hours into the game, and I have seen much but not all of what the game template offers. I can't say that I am disappointed, but I can understand those who find it a bit too quick to find their way down to the boilerplate. It is a bit shallow, but it seems to be a genre thing. Same things pop up in No Man's Sky, and the old Elite games. Sandbox and story is just hard to give life.
But ED is very good fun, and an amazing experience overall. If I get 100 hours out of this, I can only say that I was as entertained and well served this time as I was when I played Elite the first time in 1985.
 
Oh I don’t know, having recently watched one of the new episodes of Lost In Space there’s a bit that’s essentially fuel scooping in a gas giant and all I could think was “I’ll have me a slice of that, please.”

Give it a jump boost like from Neutron Stars, perhaps even jump boosts until you’ve emptied your fuel tank, and you’ve got a gameplay reason to do it. Personally, I’d do it because it looks coooool :)
We can scoop fuel from stars.
 
I can testify to that. I am one of the latest wave of new players who jumped on at the Winter/Christmas sale. The startup was flawless and the only real snag I have hit is the games absolute opaqueness as regards to 'Meta-alloys', which is more or less a clue that is impossible to solve on your own as a newbie. But right up to that point, the game did a fine job of introducing you to the mechanics and your options. The Pilot Federation kindergarten is a wonderful thing.

Now I am 60 hours into the game, and I have seen much but not all of what the game template offers. I can't say that I am disappointed, but I can understand those who find it a bit too quick to find their way down to the boilerplate. It is a bit shallow, but it seems to be a genre thing. Same things pop up in No Man's Sky, and the old Elite games. Sandbox and story is just hard to give life.
But ED is very good fun, and an amazing experience overall. If I get 100 hours out of this, I can only say that I was as entertained and well served this time as I was when I played Elite the first time in 1985.
When i was new and needed meta alloys, google worked very well
 
{scooping from gas giants} would be the useless mechanic ever.
Not if it worked like it did in FE2 where gas giant scooping was mostly safe, and star scooping was extremely dangerous - you'd fill up your tank if you found a suitable gas giant because it might be several systems before you got another good one.

It would add a bit of extra thinking to exploration (not necessarily danger, unless you were reckless), give more incentive to spend time within systems rather than honk-jump, add some extra gameplay to sun-scooping when it was required, allow the effects of solar heat to be made much larger and more relevant in general, show off some fancy gas giant atmospheric effects, make travelling an established route safer than wandering off into the unknown, make economic routing get more use, etc.

One of many game mechanics which would have been generally popular if it had been in on day 1, and which will attract massive complaints if they try to change to that now.
 
Meanwhile the basegame and Horizons continue to sell, with over half a million new players joining annually.

Somehow no one is seeing those millions of players in game.
A really wild guess of mine would be that out of those 500,000 accounts sold yearly - 70% are accounts brought by current players and 29% doesnt get past training / 1st gaming session.

Edit: or maybe the other way around: 29% are accounts belonging to old players and 70% quit in one session.
 
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