Elite Dangerous also attracts a lot of VR players. If you look at best vr games lists, Elite Dangerous is usually in the top 10. Which is why framerate is so concerning. VR becomes a puke fest at low fps.
Yong Yeas take on Elite Dangerous Odyssey (Not Good)
- Thread starter GoryDamnPixie
- Start date
I'm not a VR player - but I have read many times that ED is one of the top VR games - so I think you make a good point.
What I don't know is what percentage of ED players use VR or how big the market for VR games is (there's also the aspirational component - people probably buy VR friendly games thinking they might eventually buy VR if they like the game).
That's not going to help. It's like taking a shovel to waves on the sand. ED, and FD now has a multitude of bad press. Look at the root cause and not keep our heads in the sand.
Ed has taken 8 years of being an actual game to catch up to the 10 years of SC being an alpha.
Dave Braben (ED) and Sean Murray (NMS) are both British and apparently live in the same house.
Last edited:
I bought ED back in Beta because of VR. I still remember the first time I got in my sidewinder. I didn't buy O because I knew they would not be ready for VR support. Little did I know it would not be ready for the general market either.
I think objective reality says that the market that elite dangerous lives in is a small niche and has always been a small niche. That's why so few games come out that do it and why every one of the current ones had to start in kickstarter to do so. I also think that it's a market that has already 'bought in' in significant proportion of the entire market to the current crop of games available in the genre.
So getting more money out of players means tapping your existing playerbase or trying harder to win over the remaining marketshare that hadn't already purchased - which is hard because those people either live under a rock or aren't really interested in some key aspect of your game at all or are brand new to the genre and may not be seeking it out.
That's why fps is so important to fdev financial plans. They're not (because investors are never not) happy to make money at the same rate year over year. They want to make more money and the only way to do that is to tap a different market to have more people to sell to.
The problem with expanding your market is that you no longer have this little niche with no real competition to worry about. Fdev now has an fps that has to compete with any other fps out there and i dont think anyone is going to say that it would do well doing that. The idea of using this expansion to tap into the wider market depends on good reviews and that's not going to happen while doing what they've done - and providing the kind of gameplay that fdev has been used to providing in elite (repetitive, unskilled grind with poor balance).
I dont think odyssey is going to open that market up to them like they had been hoping. In the same way that CQC didn't fill the PVP void that a hugely dispersed playerbase in an open world environment with shoddy p2p networking caused.
Instead of getting a lot of fps players, they're going to have mostly elite dangerous players. Those players are going to wonder why everything is so independent and separate and why the balance on foot is so disconnected from the balance elsewhere in the game. And it's because the on foot gameplay wasn't directed toward them. It was designed in away that would appeal to people who weren't already invested or maybe never wanted to get invested in ED.
Sorry but this youtuber infuriated me so much I had to log back and state something!
Back in the kickstarted Beta we had bugs and very little content (compared to now) but we played the sh*t out of it until I got burned and moved on. We understood that this kind of games are hard to make and don't offer much return, they are passion projects (neglected for so long) so our (well the people I played with) expectations were shaped accordingly.
To reach the point. This game has considerably improved and moved forward year by year. This is not denying or neglecting the bad state of some ga systems or that Odyssey was released a bit raw but this is a vote of confidence that things will be ironed out along the next months like usual.
No point in joining the masses of drama or giving clicks to uninformed people who are in it just for the money (clickbaits).
Back in the kickstarted Beta we had bugs and very little content (compared to now) but we played the sh*t out of it until I got burned and moved on. We understood that this kind of games are hard to make and don't offer much return, they are passion projects (neglected for so long) so our (well the people I played with) expectations were shaped accordingly.
To reach the point. This game has considerably improved and moved forward year by year. This is not denying or neglecting the bad state of some ga systems or that Odyssey was released a bit raw but this is a vote of confidence that things will be ironed out along the next months like usual.
No point in joining the masses of drama or giving clicks to uninformed people who are in it just for the money (clickbaits).
You dont think NMS players dont already have ED accounts? Sure , some may have been holding out because ED didn't have space legs ...but you'd have to be drinking pretty heavy on the koolaid (and huffing a ton of paint) to think that ED space legs is anything like NMS space legs for that to matter.
Not a whole lot goes on in the space combat/sim /trading genre. it doesn't take much to have purchased all of the big players over the last 6 years. There's little to poach / compete with for those well centered in the genre because they've had plenty of time to buy them all. The market overlap is very nearly complete - even if the active players favor one over the other heavily.
I'll give you a secret :
Frontier and Braben back in the kickstarter day was different than today. A company near bankruptcy and a CEO with a dream for the best space sim possible. Fast forward today, Frontier have several very successful licenses (tycoon stuff), shareholders and hundreds of employees. Braben is not the excited dev with a dream, he is the CEO of a big game company that makes millions, with hundreds of people under him.
The Frontier and Braben from 2012 would have never released a DLC because they were days away from the yearly financial report. The ones from 2021 ? They would, and they did.
EDs problem is not that it's a niche market... the problem is that game is honestly pretty mediocre quality and design wise (the foundations are great... but once you get past that..........). I honestly think the niche thing is just excuse making (and that goes beyond ED). I can think of all kinds of games on steam in weird niches that sell like crazy because they are really good. In theory - something like Kerbal space program should be even way more nichey... but it's awesome so it's sold a zillion copies.
If someone actually makes a really good open world space sim game it will sell just fine.
Then again, I remember the 90s where space sims were like the biggest genre out there
If someone actually makes a really good open world space sim game it will sell just fine.
Then again, I remember the 90s where space sims were like the biggest genre out there
So What Braben got us Elite out the door after a long journey through the desert without anything similar to play.
Would you prefer to have nothing all these years instead of what we've got now in Elite? I wouldn't.
I don't care if Elite hype and boost were used to fund the independency of the company or cover the costs of developing other projects.
In the grand scheme of things, and from the perspective of someone who's played the Elite franchise along decades this is only but a minor nuisance.
Yes, Elite, as intended is a great game overall, it could be way better, yes. But this is not an easy task. If not support the Dev's who are working towards that what good is to bash them?
Hasn't No Man's Sky sold way more copies than ED? (esp if you ignore the epic store giveaway)
Sean Murray said they've had multiple years since launch year where they've had AAA release level sales.
I couldn't easily find the numbers (and people juice numbers in all kinds of ways) so maybe it's hard to say
Last edited:
the "zillions" you think these things have done are closer to the low (single digit) millions according to any of the metrics i can find online.
and it's not low millions + low millions + low millions == lots of millions in the genre. It's the same low million people buying them all.
and it's not low millions + low millions + low millions == lots of millions in the genre. It's the same low million people buying them all.
And they never have to put it in the bargain bin for 10 bucks. Each new expansion is free and drives new sales of the original game.
They release a game with a full price tag.
They get their customer opinion on it.
They took my money upfront, why should I wait to give my opinion ? The next time they release a beta, tell us it's a beta, and make it's price according to that.
And what support ? They are making lots of money already. What do they want on top for a terrible release ? Some cookies and a foot massage ? It's a business. They deliver a poor product, they get negative reviews. They deliver a good product, they get good reviews. See, it's simple !
You just sound like a dude who didn't have water for days in the desert, and suddenly find a pool of camel pee. It's not because it saves your life that you need to say it taste good, and treat the camel as your savior.
Thank you for reminding me to finally subscribe to YongYea's channel, I've known him (his channel) for a long time and watched his videos covering gaming industry's malpractices since a long time now. And I will propagate this video to my friends, because I think it's a big deal that he covered Elite's "Fiscal Year Odyssey". So a few more eyes will see this. So by this anecdotal evidence you can extrapolate that his reach is actually far higher than his core audience who is subscribed to his channel. He is well known to many gamers and prospective buyers of FDev products.
And I just love people's ignorance on this one, it's literally putting fingers in ears and singing "LALALA" to say that he doesn't matter... I am however not surprised, given that many people here play one game - this one - and ask questions like "why do I need Steam". I get it, you're not gamers, you play only Elite, you haven't heard of a rather objective and level headed youtuber because you don't like the medium, fine. Many also are mixing streamers and youtubers, when these are different categories but oh well. Stay in your bubble, reject the outside world which has moved with the times. See where that will get you.
I wonder if EDO will "make or break" this iteration of Elite Dangerous (as somebody mentioned, CP2077 stopped multiplayer work, which was planned to be released as a standalone title). So far it is not looking good for FDev, and they will need to pull a Sean Murray to redeem themselves. I don't think some arx trinkets gonna fix it. I'm watching from the sides because of the "no VR in Odyssey" thingy. And it's also not looking good for me in terms of them implementing proper VR anytime soon with sooo many fires to put out.
I need more FDev, less ... After 6 years patience has worn out.
And I just love people's ignorance on this one, it's literally putting fingers in ears and singing "LALALA" to say that he doesn't matter... I am however not surprised, given that many people here play one game - this one - and ask questions like "why do I need Steam". I get it, you're not gamers, you play only Elite, you haven't heard of a rather objective and level headed youtuber because you don't like the medium, fine. Many also are mixing streamers and youtubers, when these are different categories but oh well. Stay in your bubble, reject the outside world which has moved with the times. See where that will get you.
I wonder if EDO will "make or break" this iteration of Elite Dangerous (as somebody mentioned, CP2077 stopped multiplayer work, which was planned to be released as a standalone title). So far it is not looking good for FDev, and they will need to pull a Sean Murray to redeem themselves. I don't think some arx trinkets gonna fix it. I'm watching from the sides because of the "no VR in Odyssey" thingy. And it's also not looking good for me in terms of them implementing proper VR anytime soon with sooo many fires to put out.
I need more FDev, less ... After 6 years patience has worn out.
This is not a perfect comparison... but if you use steam reviews as a rough proxy for sales No Man's Sky has sold about 3x more copies than Elite Dangerous.
ED has about 55 thousand reviews
NMS has about 154 thousand reviews
Other comparisons:
Kerbal Space Program has about 73 thousand reviews
Space Engineers has about 76 thousand reviews
Now there's a few things these games have in common that ED doesn't have:
Unfortunately there's nothing they are going to do about the last item....and the 2nd to last is somewhat baked because of the MMO functionality. However, there's no reason that ED can't add more of the first two of these items to attract these customers (the 2nd is sorely needed regardless)
ED has about 55 thousand reviews
NMS has about 154 thousand reviews
Other comparisons:
Kerbal Space Program has about 73 thousand reviews
Space Engineers has about 76 thousand reviews
Now there's a few things these games have in common that ED doesn't have:
- Some kind of building creation/mechanic
- Much deeper gameplay systems (to varying degrees)
- Much lower development and support costs
- Single Player offline modes
Unfortunately there's nothing they are going to do about the last item....and the 2nd to last is somewhat baked because of the MMO functionality. However, there's no reason that ED can't add more of the first two of these items to attract these customers (the 2nd is sorely needed regardless)
Last edited:
I've known about him ever since he released the Skyrim fan films "Dragonborn Acts I and II." Unfortunately he never released Act III and won't respond to subscriber's questions about when it'll be finished. Too bad, too, because both those videos were astounding, especially has camera work.
Since he apparently had some issue with his gaming rig he's switched to other "game movies" and game reviews (as well as just commenting on stuff). I was surprised to see his review of ED at all.
Why would I listen to a person, that forms an aggressive face whenever trying to spell a F or V, and ontop of that didn't even play the game? Judging on any of his other videos, the guy is clearly searching for hate attention. He will try, but it's not easy to mimic an Angry Joe, if there's nothing to show of but passive aggression.
Last edited: