Elite Dangerous History - Part 3 - The Glory Years, 2015-2017

[drew]

Welcome to a new month and a new ED Video. The history series continues, now to the "Glory years" of 2015-2017.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8rkgPpa_V8&feature=youtu.be


Cheers,

Drew.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Nice video. I think you got it very right by referencing those years as the glory years.

Its interesting that right about the end of that was when it all changed. I remember well around the last quarter of 2017 the community management content just stopped, and when they came back an unusually long time later, their whole attitude towards the game felt distant, more like just marketing.. without any deep substance to back it up. I think it stayed that way for years until Arthur joined honestly. We won't know if frontier has changed until we get the next patch, but arthur definitely puts on a more acceptable and convincing show.

Yeah im curious if you're going to speculate what happened. At the same time, didn't frontier grow from 200 or so staff into 500 in months to a year? Was thinking earlier that they would have had no choice but to take the best people from prior staff to see the teams of new people as leads. I doubt it could have worked otherwise, imagine 4 teams of 100 people completely new to the company trying to work on projects. Just wouldn't happen? Why would they defy all logic and make beyond free? Most people assume its fair to pay someone for their work at some point..

Thanks for recalling the good memories from the horizons years though. If return had been more than just pve combat.. well those years were still glorious.

Note, what made it glorious was frontier was supporting their game. No emotions, no corporate showmanship, no saying one thing, acting another, and getting told you're wrong by white knights because they said it must be true. Just patches and the ship skin tip jar. Best setup ever.

 

[Alien]

Nice video. I think you got it very right by referencing those years as the glory years.

Its interesting that right about the end of that was when it all changed. I remember well around the last quarter of 2017 the community management content just stopped, and when they came back an unusually long time later, their whole attitude towards the game felt distant, more like just marketing.. without any deep substance to back it up. I think it stayed that way for years until Arthur joined honestly. We won't know if frontier has changed until we get the next patch, but arthur definitely puts on a more acceptable and convincing show.

That was about the time Frontier had to take the hard decision to tell us there would be no new content (apart from Fleet Carriers) for two years. That could be (and I am speculating because I don't actually know) why so many left the community management team, ie Ed Lewis.

Yeah im curious if you're going to speculate what happened. At the same time, didn't frontier grow from 200 or so staff into 500 in months to a year? Was thinking earlier that they would have had no choice but to take the best people from prior staff to see the teams of new people as leads. I doubt it could have worked otherwise, imagine 4 teams of 100 people completely new to the company trying to work on projects. Just wouldn't happen? Why would they defy all logic and make beyond free? Most people assume its fair to pay someone for their work at some point..

Remember though, that increase in staff was also to develop new games.

 

[Heater]

Great video Drew and spot on!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Why would they defy all logic and make beyond free? Most people assume its fair to pay someone for their work at some point..

There are three ways Frontier can make money from new content, though:
1) Charge for it as an expansion (Horizons, Odyssey), which wouldn't have worked for most of what was in Beyond
2) Make the basic offering better to encourage more people to buy it
3) Make the basic offering better to encourage existing players to spend more time in game and some of them might buy more cosmetics

New base/Horizons sales continued to be pretty strong throughout Beyond, so I'm pretty sure they got paid for it one way or another.

Similarly things like the new storyline, or other managed in-game events, aren't directly chargeable, require staff to be paid to run and develop them ... but presumably Frontier believe that doing so pays off in the long run. (Bugfixes likewise, except that they clearly don't believe most of those are financially worthwhile or they'd have a less hostile bug report tool...)

 

[drew]

Part 4 will be up on Wednesday morning. Like 'n' subscribe.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[metatheurgist]

That was about the time Frontier had to take the hard decision to tell us there would be no new content (apart from Fleet Carriers) for two years. That could be (and I am speculating because I don't actually know) why so many left the community management team, ie Ed Lewis.



Remember though, that increase in staff was also to develop new games.

Nah, Ed got a shot to work at a big company. Can't blame him.

Not sure I'd call PP, CQC the glory years myself, for the reasons stated in the video. The focus on empty MP mechanics was the cause of the subsequent content drought imo.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

Im not sure i agree calling those the glory days. The average concurrent players dropped so low at a few points, even CGs in open felt like a ghost town. People were scanning planets with Mk1 eyeballs. Frontier were relentlessly playing wack-a-mole with the various cash grabs while serious bugs, like falling skimmers were killing people regularly. I remember those years fondly but not because the game or frontier were any better.

 

[Chrystoph]

I think I would agree with this period being, "the Golden Years", not because of any greatness inherent in the game play, but rather that this was the period I most felt like Frontier was engaged with the player base.

I remember Jaques, the Power Play competition and other events at the end of the referenced time frame as places where many elements of the community felt like Frontier had either stopped listening or was finding out what was being said and then actively acting against it.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Nah, Ed got a shot to work at a big company. Can't blame him.

Not sure I'd call PP, CQC the glory years myself, for the reasons stated in the video. The focus on empty MP mechanics was the cause of the subsequent content drought imo.

The problem was not the features (which were good starting points) but how quickly FD just dropped them, like they always do with new things.

 

[Jazzy]

The problem was not the features (which were good starting points) but how quickly FD just dropped them, like they always do with new things.

Indeed this. Add CQC... and dumped like a red headed step child, Powerplay, dropped like CQC. If they actually worked on correcting and making the janky systems work maybe more people would consider returning. Ever person I used to play with has moved on due to many of the above posts reasons mention, I as well who was a religious daily player maybe puts in an hour a week at best now days. There just isnt that "Got to Play" feeling anymore, and with CoD Elite coming in the Xpac, its going to be a kiddie event once again, dont see it overly improving the game.

 

[M_72]

Im not sure i agree calling those the glory days. The average concurrent players dropped so low at a few points, even CGs in open felt like a ghost town. People were scanning planets with Mk1 eyeballs. Frontier were relentlessly playing wack-a-mole with the various cash grabs while serious bugs, like falling skimmers were killing people regularly. I remember those years fondly but not because the game or frontier were any better.

In terms of Frontier's attitude to their game and the long periods of not much happening from their end, I'd agree they weren't exactly 'glory days', however from the community perspective they were very much the glory days of Elite imo. We had;

• The first players to visit Sgr A*.
• The first galactic crossing and discovery of Beagle Point.
• Distant Worlds 3302 expedition - one of the most memorable events in the exploration community.
• The Colonia initiatives - players discovering and shipping materials out to the stranded Jaques station.
• The establishment of the Colonia Citizens Network - a hotbed of events and projects at the time.
• The Salome event.
• The Gnosis event.
• Distant Worlds 2 - the largest event ever in Elite (and possibly video gaming in general).

All of these were created by the community. Frontier had minimal input in them (apart for the Gnosis event which turned it into something the organizers never asked for).

Its great to see Frontier these days be more active with the community, but it seems as a consequence the community no longer creates these epic events off their own back. In that respect, those glory days are over, they reached their pinnacle with DW2 as there's been nothing on that scale ever since.

 

[drew]

I will cover the Gnosis in the next episode (up tomorrow) as that occurred in 2018. The next video covers 2018-2020 and brings the history up to date. That's the end of this series for now... I've got a few more lore videos to make and then... that's probably it!

DW3 is still mooted to take place once Odyssey is out on all platforms. Hopefully there'll be sufficient exploration content in Odyssey to justify it.

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[Rock-Hermit]

Fantastic series Drew

• Distant Worlds 2 - the largest event ever in Elite (and possibly video gaming in general).

Wasn't this in 3308 ?
I think it was announced in 3307, but launched a year later.

DW3 is still mooted to take place once Odyssey is out on all platforms. Hopefully there'll be sufficient exploration content in Odyssey to justify it.

I'm very much looking forward to it!

 

[drew]

Wasn't this in 3308 ?
I think it was announced in 3307, but launched a year later.

DW2 was announced in late 3303 (2017) and launched in early 3305 (2019)

Cheers,

Drew.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

There are three ways Frontier can make money from new content, though:
1) Charge for it as an expansion (Horizons, Odyssey), which wouldn't have worked for most of what was in Beyond
2) Make the basic offering better to encourage more people to buy it
3) Make the basic offering better to encourage existing players to spend more time in game and some of them might buy more cosmetics

New base/Horizons sales continued to be pretty strong throughout Beyond, so I'm pretty sure they got paid for it one way or another.

Similarly things like the new storyline, or other managed in-game events, aren't directly chargeable, require staff to be paid to run and develop them ... but presumably Frontier believe that doing so pays off in the long run. (Bugfixes likewise, except that they clearly don't believe most of those are financially worthwhile or they'd have a less hostile bug report tool...)

The only curious thing about the reality you described was.. why didn't they decide to add more and charge for it rather then water down and make it free? Instead of turning it down, they could have kept going at the pace required to claim a fee? We can only speculate. Which is the point of these videos and thread i guess

 

[Flimley]

Have to say,
I was completely baffled by the release of PowerPlay and CQC. The latter I considered a separate game and not part of elite dangerous, at all. And regarding PP, which I thought to be ‘Games of Thrones’ in space, I couldn’t understand why the BGS wasnt significantly enhanced/updated instead. I guess it was one of those catch the wider market board room PR decision making things.

Flimley

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Its great to see Frontier these days be more active with the community, but it seems as a consequence the community no longer creates these epic events off their own back. In that respect, those glory days are over, they reached their pinnacle with DW2 as there's been nothing on that scale ever since.

There's two types of event in that list, though. (I'd count the Salome storyline as an official Frontier event, rather than a community-driven one)

1) Ones which were community-driven but had significant Frontier support in terms of providing additional assets or events (Gnosis, DW2, Colonia), usually with several thousand participants
2) Ones which had participant counts around 1000 players or less (DW1, early exploration milestones, etc.) that were fully community-organised.

There are plenty of the second sort going on still nowadays - there was a recent carrier-based exploration trip with around a thousand participants which visited Colonia this weekend (and required some CG-style teamwork and logistics planning from various existing residents to support) setting massive new daily traffic records for the region ... EDSM lists a bunch of >100-participant expeditions both recent and planned ... Colonia's recent Anarchist Wars were entirely community-driven and involved over a hundred players on the various sides ... Operation IDA is pretty big and basically organised itself during that time period ... Buckyball racing is still going strong ... there are plenty of player groups with >100 player counts regularly organising their own events ... I've missed far more than I've included from this list, just in the last year.

Perhaps what's happened is that the community has grown so much since those early days [1] that an event with "merely" hundreds of participants just doesn't get the same attention nowadays - that's just one moderately important player group. Even DW2, for all its immense scale and organisational effort, only involved a few percent of total players.


[1] Of course, even in those earlier days, there wasn't just one "community" or even one "exploration community" either. The Dangerous Games were convincingly won by a huge community group which had grown up around the Elite series before ED even existed ... and which barely anyone in many other communities had heard of. I wonder if that was a wake-up call to Frontier's community management team as well.

 

[metatheurgist]

Have to say,
I was completely baffled by the release of PowerPlay and CQC. The latter I considered a separate game and not part of elite dangerous, at all. And regarding PP, which I thought to be ‘Games of Thrones’ in space, I couldn’t understand why the BGS wasnt significantly enhanced/updated instead. I guess it was one of those catch the wider market board room PR decision making things.

Flimley

Yep, the obvious thing was to expand the BGS and make it richer and deeper. Not this weird game within a game (that was as separate as CQC in it's own way).

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

The fricken era of the stupid engineers can hardly be described "golden years". I'd rather call that era the nollocks era. Tell your customers one thing and then do something quite contrary. For me it's with Horizons I felt fooled around with when 2.1 hit the release.
Or take external cam - asked for ages by players. What do we get instead of some 3 F-keys to control external cam? A convoluted device you have to study UI engineering first before using it.
No, Horizon pitched a nice planetary module and then underdelivered on that base and went from twig to pebble releasing stuff that no one ever asked for.

Like ship transfer with delay timers AND credit cost.

A multi-crew that is barely usable and a middle finger to any player with lower rank, because their game time is much lower in value than higher rank players.

A gear progression system that is Pachinko Heaven for mtx promotion (they just ripped out the mtx portion of selling mats) and took two further years of development to become somewhat playable.

A story line you have to be lucky on a RNG roll to ever initiate.