Player Retention

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

Maybe their attitude of frontier being the highest respectable form of perfection regardless of output extends all the way through the team not just from community management?

Given how a better product fundamentally benefits them first you can't guess really.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

My own experience and observation regarding player retention is the disappointment people experience regarding multi-player coupled with the 1 dimensional game play "loops". Alot of people just get fed up with the glitches, broken instancing and disconnects when trying to play with friends. I recall being all pumped up to blast goids with a friend who had been training hard. So we get to the system, hunt around for NHSS and screw around for at least 30 minutes trying to make it work. I would drop in, and the instance was bugged. No goids, despite being a threat 5 and all the green wrecked ships. Finally found one that worked AND got my buddy in. We start fighting the alien. We are both just absolutely pummelling the thing and it's not doing any damage. One of us blows up. Repeat the experience 3 more times. Figure out that we are shooting different hearts and I can't see which one is actually exposed. At this point, I'm so fing ticked off that I quit. To this day, no desire to try again even though I guess that bug is fixed. It's things like that that leave a bad taste in people's mouth. Change the name and change the specifics of the combination of bugs they experienced and you can imagine how many 10s of thousands of bad experiences people have had.

 

[Thatchinho]

Yes, thanks for that, I must have forgotten (I can hardly believe I missed this post at the time). Either that, or I couldn't quite take it seriously, and actually still can't. Because it doesn't explain why this sector is still closed or what event the cone sector was for. After more than 2 years I would expect something more than silence...

But who knows, maybe I should check if the sector is really still closed and nobody is interested in it anymore. But that's extremely unlikely, isn't it?

Yeah, it won't have unlocked. I don't think it was ever suggested that the cone sector is for an event. The region locks are for future stuff (in broader terms than an event). They're not going to say what they're locked for anyway because that would just be massive spoilers (plus it might change anyway). I'm not sure why an explanation of why the cone is still closed is needed any more than for any of the other permit locked regions - the mistakes that meant the Gnosis had it's requested course approved by FD was just that - mistakes. It wasn't part of FD plans for the permit locked areas.

Pretty sure what happened with the Gnosis kind of gives away what's planned for the Cone in the future anyway though.

(Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I wouldn't like to see any of that stuff progress, but the progression of things is a whole different topic - and there are other closer region locks than the Cone, where we do know a bit of what's there, which personally I would think will open before the Cone - and none of them have opened up yet either. I think the Cone will be quite a bit further down the line than them.)

 

[varonica]

I know its a sandbox but what's wrong with Frontier creating a Event other then the standard CG that would bring in many commanders.

They did, the created the "Gnosis Event", players are still complaining about it going by the current example. The Gnosis Event was an event instituted by FDEV in response to player action, it was interesting, a surprise, it was exciting to read and hear about at the time and probably exciting for many of the players involved. ED isn't a story driven game so you can't really have story driven events that each player can take part in sperately, because once a few players have done it everyone knows all about it, the easiest way to do it, any workarounds for the hard bits and whether it's actually worth doing, so that system doesn't really work.

 

[Red Rocket]

I had both a xeno fighting ship and an explorer vessel on Gnosis, both relatively cheap ones in case we wouldn't be able to jump back.. I remember the disappointment when we only jumped a couple of systems afar. But they tried to save it afterwards, dodging the Thargoid attacks to take off was fun, I got killed by the Gnosis the second time and got sent to prison

Fun times!

I forgot about being sent to prison many light years away and I was just defending the Gnosis.
I can look back and be happy I took part, good or bad Elite is a special game.

 

[Red Rocket]

That's the frustrating part. I'd love to play Elite but haven't wanted to since trying out Odyssey, which I was very excited for. If I could just ignore on-foot gameplay it'd be fine, but the main game has been downgraded because of it.

Plenty of people are now just waiting for the game to get fixed. Some of them much longer than one year.

I did the exact same, very excited, got Odyssey for main and alt.
Play mostly in VR, no VR support for Odyssey, flat screen for on foot in VR turned me off.
Stopped playing for a while but started to miss Elite, now mostly play VR in Horizons.
Much better VR performance

 

[Dragsham]

Back to Op.

The single biggest fix fdev could do is get a new up to date propper network.
One that many have commented on already, to replace the pants sh*t show that's our current p2p crap.
It's the biggest fall over in elite. It causes no end of problems trying to instance etc.
Then in understandable frustration cmdrs leave.
Get rid of p2p.
Also...
A shameless grappling hook plug pls.

o7

 

[Ettanin]

Back to Op.

The single biggest fix fdev could do is get a new up to date propper network.
One that many have commented on already, to replace the pants sh*t show that's our current p2p crap.
It's the biggest fall over in elite. It causes no end of problems trying to instance etc.
Then in understandable frustration cmdrs leave.
Get rid of p2p.
Also...
A shameless grappling hook plug pls.

o7

Not Frontier's fault for the player to have a broken form of internet connection (yes, CGNAT is broken). Get a dedicated (static or dynamic doesn't matter) IPv4 address. Either ask your ISP or rent a cheap VPS to configure it into a VPN. Then properly forward your ports.

Unless Frontier loosens the rules under which TURN relays will be deployed (vs spawning an empty instance instead), this is your only option to get instancing to work properly.

If you want true client-server, ED will require a subscription. And given the current CCU, it's unlikely to be enough to justify the costs.

 

[Flimley]

I never forgot the Gnosis. And i also never forgot my first werthers original, with its uncannily good taste.

Flimley

 

[Red Rocket]

What sort of non-CG events do you think would bring in more commanders?

Have you heard of a gimmick road rally where you are given a set on instructions that you follow to navigate through a course.
The instructions will contain tricks and puzzles to try and confuse you, like streets with president names don’t exist or all 2’s are 8’s.
You get points as you navigate through, getting +points when on course and -points when you go off course.
They would work great in Elite because any number can play, killer course’s can be set up in Elite.

A sports car club put on one a month for a while, they were great fun and you got a participation plaque.

scavenger hunts would also be fun.

 

[alexzk]

Over 4000 commanders signed up for DW2’s

Ye, I was thinking today something similar - why anybody in space game would want to party with others? It's a game about being alone and think about eternity. For parties there are many other games.

 

[Red Rocket]

Ye, I was thinking today something similar - why anybody in space game would want to party with others? It's a game about being alone and think about eternity. For parties there are many other games.

When we did mass-jumps all together we would crash the server…too much fun

 

[Bigmaec]

Ah, selective memory and made-up numbers in a Gnosis thread. Let the salt flow.

Lets see:
AX pilots got their money's worth out of the event. Part of the 15.000
PvP pilots, gankers and defenders (like me) likewise. Part of the 15.000
Spectators? Oh boy, were you not entertained? Part of the 15.000

Just the explorers were salty they couldn't get their name on some untagged worlds,
exploiting an oversight in the then-time only fleet carrier/megaship under player control.

 

[Brrokk]

...
Just look at the Gnosis/Cone Sector Debacle, where players were told by Fdev that the Gnosis was going to jump to a Sector no one could go to and return. Over 15,000 commanders boarded the Gnosis in anticipation of an adventure. Fdev realized at some point that they made a mistake and made the Gnosis miss-jump not making it to the Cone Sector, disappointing a large portion of the 15,000 commanders.
...

This is not what happened. As soon as Canonn announced the planned jump, FD said it might not work. Canonn said they were going to attempt it anyway. FD said that there was Thargoid presence in the area. Canonn said they were still going. Then FD said that a new kind of Thargoid had been detected. I was aboard, 99.99% certain that there would be a mis-jump and something thargoidy happening, just for the 0.01% chance of being the first to see the Thargoid home world. It was great fun.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Just the explorers were salty they couldn't get their name on some untagged worlds,

Not that they'd even have been untagged, for the most part. The permit locks on Col 70, Cone, etc. only got introduced in 2.1 after Frontier "fixed a bug", so most of the systems immediately around Cone probably have someone's name on them.

 

[varonica]

But isn't that the most glaring limitation that any MMO must inherently suffer from?

Well not really, because the events in an MMO can be played through by any player, for instance in LOTRO and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, while we of course know what happened from the books and the films, and you can watch vidoes on youtube of players playing it, the battle can always be played by players passing through that leveling region, but you can't re-play stuff that happened in Elite Dangerous, I mean look at the finding of the first guardian ruins for instance, you can visit them, you can find out where they are in game, but you can't take part in that adventure of hunting them down, or Jaques abortive jump to BP and eventual rescue, they can't be played again, or the finding of the Alexandria.

The main issue in Elite Dangerous is that everything happens in real time, and once it's passed it never comes back, it can't be replayed by new players, and most MMO's don't operate on this basis. LOTRO, BDO etc the full storyline can be played, or you can skip it and power level your characters in both games if they are alts and you've alerady played through the main storyline, but any new players can fully take part in the story line from the beginning to the end. One of the problems with the ED game model is that there must be a continuous stream of brand new content incoming to run a storyline because old storylines can't be replayed by new players.

 

[Northpin]

Distant worlds II organized by a small group of Commanders shows just how much commanders want to play Elite. Over 4000 commanders signed up for DW2’s 4 month-plus adventure, and this is where Fdev GOT IT RIGHT.

13600 signed, 3750 completed it.
During DW2 we had the Explorer's Anchorage CG - near SagA* - 6000 commanders participated in mining an bounty hunting CG at the core of the galaxy (it was also my first trip to SagA* and on the return path i took a detour through Colonia)

 

[Deleted member 182079]

I wasn't there for the Gnosis kerfuffle. But from what I've read the most hilarious part is when cmdrs in combat ships tried to fight back against the Thargoids, they incur a fine for using weapons in a no fire zone and got sent to prison hundreds of ly away after getting destroyed so they can't go back to the Gnosis.

The salt from that was half the fun to be fair - I certainly enjoyed reading the posts while having to work, later on when I could log in I was warned accordingly and stuck to USSs elsewhere. Was great having to dodge Goids while departing from the megaship though.

I brought a semi squishy AX/Exploration Krait 2 hybrid after spending some fun times before making the trip to the Gnosis (that took me like 30-40 jumps iirc) trying to work out what to prepare for as nobody knew at the time what would happen.

 

[Astaran]

Ah, the infamous Gnosis "misjump"...I couldn't participate myself, but I loved how it all developed. I think it was an awesome event and, for once, showed the Thargoid as an actual threat to players. My favorite activity in Elite is exploration and I say: More of this please. I would like to see regions in space so dangerous (for whatever reason), that you should not want to investigate them with a stripped down, max range, paper thin explorer build. If we ever get to properly explore Thargoid home space, I want scouts and interceptors to interdict and hyperdict us. I want to see us explorers in a position, where we have to think "outside our comfort zone" in terms of survivable exploration builds. The same goes for regions where the Guardian AI is hiding or maybe some other xenos presence.

------

Well not really, because the events in an MMO can be played through by any player, for instance in LOTRO and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, while we of course know what happened from the books and the films, and you can watch vidoes on youtube of players playing it, the battle can always be played by players passing through that leveling region, but you can't re-play stuff that happened in Elite Dangerous, I mean look at the finding of the first guardian ruins for instance, you can visit them, you can find out where they are in game, but you can't take part in that adventure of hunting them down, or Jaques abortive jump to BP and eventual rescue, they can't be played again, or the finding of the Alexandria.

The main issue in Elite Dangerous is that everything happens in real time, and once it's passed it never comes back, it can't be replayed by new players, and most MMO's don't operate on this basis. LOTRO, BDO etc the full storyline can be played, or you can skip it and power level your characters in both games if they are alts and you've alerady played through the main storyline, but any new players can fully take part in the story line from the beginning to the end. One of the problems with the ED game model is that there must be a continuous stream of brand new content incoming to run a storyline because old storylines can't be replayed by new players.

Some of my fondest MMO memories come from those unique events. When I first played World of Warcraft in early 2006, my server (Malygos/EU) was busy opening the AQ gates. As a little noob, I had a lot of fun "doing my part" in the war preparations and when the "top raid guild" of the server finally triggered the opening event, it was an awesome and hilarious battle in Silithus vs those giant Anubis things. Later, just before Burning Crusade was launched, there was this event about the Dark Portal opening and demons attacking Azeroth. There were constant attacks on the capitals with dead players lying everywhere in Stormwind. It was total carnage and total fun. As you said, those events cannot be "re-lived" by newer players ever again (I still got my tabard from the original opening of the Dark Portal, some 15 years old be now \o/ ), which is what makes them so special memories.

At the moment, Elite is doing some "low key" stuff in that regard. The Azimuth story goes on and on, with some puzzles to solve, sometimes a CG etc. It started big enough with the discovery of the Adamastor, but I think the storyline could do well with some "bigger events" every once in a while. Something that would resonate with the community and Elite "History" just like the founding of Colonia, the Golconda, the Salome event or the discovery of the first Guardian ruins. Something where players in 5 years still say with some pride "I was there."

 

[varonica]

Some of my fondest MMO memories come from those unique events.

The Jacques attempted jump to BP was the first memorable one for me, I was not brand new to the game, but relatively new, and when the call came out to supply the station with hydrogen I jumped in with my trusty T6 loaded up, entered the system name where the station was at the time, and watched as the dotted line vanished off the bottom of my star map.

Understand so far I had just been doing local cargo runs, basically to build my finances to properly equip a new python and all out of my home and starting base, Baker's Prospect, how many remember that place, and had yet to travel more than a half dozen system away, so the dotted line vanishing apparantly into the depths of the galaxy looked....challenging! Nonetheless off I went to assist the brave adventurer, and then disaster as he vanished. I continued on with that mission when he sent out a distress call asking for help and was on my way in my finally outfitted Python, 17ly jump range to nearly the center of the galaxy and my first real taste of exploration, and I haven't stopped since.

Ah the memories!