Giving a 'soon' TM because I don't have a concrete date for you right now - definitely on the sooner TM side than the later TM side.
Player Retention
- Thread starter Red Rocket
- Start date
Giving a 'soon' TM because I don't have a concrete date for you right now - definitely on the sooner TM side than the later TM side.
Deleted member 182079
D
I've reset my account last year, something I still can't decide whether it was my biggest regret in the game or not given how much I've lost (triple Elite with literally everything bar 2-3 human tech broker items unlocked and maxed out, FC and 5bn in credits). One thing that did (out of necessity) is make me play the game slightly differently.I helped out one of my friends with Meta Alloys to unlock the engineer in Deciat. Basically I had some left overs and sold them for a bargain. But I also deliberately did not bring them into Mining frenzy, although in hindsight that might have been my greatest mistake. I probably should have send them mining to earn a lot of credits very fast, so they can access new game loops faster. Credits are an enabler in Elite. The more credits you have, the more stuff you can try out and maybe you find something that gets you hooked into the game.
My brother is another example. He's quite the hardcore gamer and when he sinks his teeth into a game, there's no holding back. He actually started playing Elite before me, but only for some 20 hours or so. For him, Elite is just too time consuming to get things even started. Engineering a ship for example. You need to meet the pre-requisites for the Engineer, you have to unlock the engineer, you have to "improve" the engineer by engineering stuff, so you can advance to either the next engineer (the one you actually need) or to get something to G4 or G5. When we go exploring, I usually take him onboard my FC to wherever we want to go. He's still flying a DBX, although I suggested improving to a Krait or AspX. Maybe we'll do another month+ long expedition when FC interiors drop and I can "convince" him to give Elite another try. But all in all, there are other games out there that are more readily accessible, get you "into the action" much faster and are just better suited for people with a full time job and family
I realised I don't need to max out every ship, or unlock every engineer. The benefits between G3 and G5 become more marginal and are often not worth the effort of getting the required mats (exceptions are thrusters and FSD). Though it can be frustrating to not even be able to G2 something because you don't have the mats available, but after playing for a while (and yes, patience and perseverence is still very much required) and building up a bit of a stash of G1-G3 mats it's more than sufficient if you don't do PvP.
The difference with EDO engineering is that you have to gather a lot of mats (in much higher numbers) upfront before you can even apply a mod or upgrade. If it was more aligned with ship engineering in how it works I don't think I'd mind it as much (and obviously the ability to remove/replace mods from a suit/weapon, rather than having to do it from scratch - purely done to artificially extend the time you're busy with this content).
There is a part of game design psychology (and people have qualifications and jobs in this!) 100% connected to MMO and Online games and also casual games like the ones Big Fish publishes etc, that i feel Frontier need to be very careful around. Star Citizen has shamelessly got into it to with the whole 'whale hunting' aspect to selling their virtual ships, and not having played Odyssey but read a bit about it i feel uncomfortable that it is close to what i call 'gaming the gamer'.
Sure a game needs content, but as Sid Meier wisely stated,“A game is a series of interesting choices.” and grind for grind's sake especially if it bumps up against the games internal over-arching narrative can disjoint the players engagement in that story and journey (as i find often happens in NMS for example).
One thing really stands out to me when hearing longtime players of ED (EDH/EDO etc) say money now has no meaning for them, and i'm sitting pretty in my Class A upgraded (no Engineering yet) Asp Explorer after a few weeks of game time as a new player, with 24 million credits to my name as i work towards the Krait Phantom. That one thing is that for whatever reason (i was not around here a huge amount over the last 7 years) Frontier Devs took the decision to more or less remove one of the principle game choices of Elite in terms of the actual in game valuation of wealth. Credits are easy to come by that i suspect if i aimed at it, i could end up with the most expensive ship in ED with all the trimmings, comparatively easily?
Ships should be the number 1 credit sink in the game, and ok you have all the engineering meta game to grind into, but that should not take away from the fundamental 'value' of credits in the whole game economy. It just feels like an odd choice maybe aimed at new players complaints that ultimately will reduce even their challenge and enjoyment in the game as they get over the newbie hump and find themselves drowning in credits and in the best ships sooner and for longer (and with little upgrade path after that to really look forward too).
Like i said i was not here over the last 6-7 years so did not see what bought about that particular change, but i'm not sure it is a good change in terms of being a driver for player choices in the game. Ship prices (especially the first tier small ship progression path) seem overly cheap and easy to move through, and i feel that is perhaps an error of design? Even if perhaps 'popular' in many other games in relation to giving players almost instant gratification etc.
Last edited:
ED was really hard to get into; much harder than any other game I've played. There were great frustrations, but I enjoyed overcoming them. One I remember was spending several evenings getting a wake scanner to work. It's in a utility slot, but you have to deploy hardpoints to make it work?! (And where you first want to use it, outside a station, you get told off for deploying hardpoints). I've still never seen any documentation, help text or training that tells any of this.
Another was planetary landing: on my first attempt I tried approaching at 90 degrees and leaving the ship in a dive for several minutes, before realising that this couldn't be the right way. I read about "glide" but didn't immediately twig, because I assumed that "glide" had to be slower than powered flight.
So ED is a great game if you have enough persistence and don't mind figuring things out or googling. I'm actually surprised that it's had the success we see. FD were right to do some work on the initial player experience and I think a bit more would probably help.
Another was planetary landing: on my first attempt I tried approaching at 90 degrees and leaving the ship in a dive for several minutes, before realising that this couldn't be the right way. I read about "glide" but didn't immediately twig, because I assumed that "glide" had to be slower than powered flight.
So ED is a great game if you have enough persistence and don't mind figuring things out or googling. I'm actually surprised that it's had the success we see. FD were right to do some work on the initial player experience and I think a bit more would probably help.
Yes, indeed.
I do remember starting on XB at the end of 2018.
I was not an XB player so i was struggling to develop muscle-memory for controller while trying to learn all the binds in ED and learning to fly the ship.
Took me a entire afternoon - like 3-4 hours - to actually be able to take off and land in a consistent manner.
Then one year later, at the end of 2019 when i started my Steam alt - what a game changer was the new player experience and the new flying tutorial.
For me personally, it's the problem that after the initial "wow factor" and passing the hurdle of knowledge, the gameplay loops become quite simplistic.
Even combat quickly turns into shooting fish in a barrel. Added to this the world often feels way too predictable and scripted.
I kind of miss the sense of adventure Elite. Not really any danger or unknown risks involved.
Even combat quickly turns into shooting fish in a barrel. Added to this the world often feels way too predictable and scripted.
I kind of miss the sense of adventure Elite. Not really any danger or unknown risks involved.
Can you possibly tell us the reason(s) for the delay in resuming full comms again? I.e. Development Updates (RIP January's), Weekly Schedules, Livestreams, and Arf's Engineering-Chat (that he talked about in his xmas message).
Big thanks and hope you're all well and healthy
I believe it was originally meant to be late January per Arfs last appearance on stream or in general.
Flying under-powered unengineered ships gives me plenty of risk...
So I should switch out of my viper 3 into, what? a hauler and try to ram other ships?
Gimping yourself intentionally is artificial challenge. And artificial challenge is a game design no no. That's like playing DnD and you ask the DM to Spice up the encounters because you are breezing through. And the DM says: lol just don't use your swords
I think the point being made above was more along the lines of danger as in unpredictability, rather than mere difficulty/challenge.
The combination of BGS and PP could have more and varied influence, giving rise to short lived (i.e. naturally unstable) situations where a system could be taken over by the local pirate lord where enemies would be dispatched with pretty quickly. Conversely, short lived high risk / very high profit trade routes, or simply very profitable routes that would bring people together would be nice too.
Just playing in open mode isn't enough as currently you need G5 engineering and it's mostly gank / be ganked or do arranged combat,
And here we have the rare Zac Cocken out in the wild. What a thrill! We'll just remain very still so as not to startle him....agh, the little rascal got spooked and scampered away.
Pretty much this, but npc's from competant and upwards could definitely also use an update.
I would love these kind of interactions through bgs interactions.
Like you said a system is under a pirate attack, area becomes really dangerous. Bounty hunters step to make it safe again.
Or bounty hunters clean an area with pirates and truckers then step in to build defences in the system to keep it safe.
It's not as much about gimping yourself as is about playing lvl 50 characters in lvl 10 zones - to keep it into DnD realm
Because that's basically it - your G5 murdership going in a haz res will wreak havoc - especially if the ship is a strong medium or large ship.
If you want a challenge, go in a high cz or in a pirate threat uss or go mess with the thargs.
Else, yes - use whatever ship that makes the game interesting and challenging for you.
Or play with
I already said I flew a viper 3 but ok, it wasn't even fully engineered and with fixed mc's. At competant rank I was taking on master ranked medium ships with only g3 engines, g2 weapons and shields. And Deadly small ships posed no threat at all.
So going to the dnd analogy, I am already in a zone twice my level.
And then everything is still predictable and scripted, there are no unexpected dangers.
Hmm...
Let's see if I can parse this out...
Okay... I think I understand you.
This is my experience. I've been playing since the Alpha... the original Alpha back in 2013. Now, I consider myself a "hardcore" gamer who is time poor at this time, so I prefer difficult games, but don't have the time to play them as often as I'd wish. Back in Alpha 4, Frontier introduced their economic sim, which IMO they nailed perfectly, but there was one flaw: capability increases were logarithmic, while cost was exponential.
In other words, as ships and components slowly crept upwards in power, their cost increased at FTL speeds. Since operational costs scaled with the cost of the ship and its components, as opposed to their capabilities, it became very easy to have too much ship for your relative skill level, and the largest ships were unprofitable to trade with unless you traded in the most profitable commodities, and fighting in them was right out.
This cost scaling, which exists to this day, is IMO Frontier's "original sin." It's fairly common in most MMOs, but those are designed in such a way that encourages players to leave an area once it becomes to easy. Elite Dangerous, like every other game in the franchise, is a wide open sandbox, so this approach isn't really possible. Pretty much all content is accessible anywhere, at any time, so its possible for a player to attempt actions that are way beyond their skill level and ship capabilities, as well as repeatedly perform actions that are so below their skill level and ship capabilities that those actions become an uninteresting and unbeneficial grind.
Frontier's solution to the problem of large ships being unprofitable to operate wasn't to fix the cost of ships and components so that they were more in line with the benefits they provided, but to increase rewards exponentially over the years. This has had two side effects:
1) New players quickly move from the smaller ships that are new player friendly into ships way beyond their skill level in this game. Empowering players to essentially skip the ships that allow you to make inexpensive mistakes as you learn how to play the game is a recipe for new player frustration. This game already has a steep learning curve, due to it falling more on the "simulation" side of the "arcade vs simulation" spectrum of games. Allowing players to jumps straight from "training sidewinder" to "difficult to operate larger ship" just increased the learning curve that much more.
2) It filled in most of the depth that this game started with. There is little need to weight the benefits and costs of various actions in the game when any action you can take is equally rewarding. There are no temptations to push you out of your comfort zone, to tempt you to take risky actions just beyond your skill level. This isn't a great way to develop skills in the game.
It doesn't help that most of the readily accessible "how to" guides and common forum wisdom about this game is stuff I would describe as "How to waste your time and ruin your experience by grinding and relying on data mining websites." I don't want to waste my limited time in this game, and I definitely don't ruin my experience, so I... dare I say it... blazed my own trail.
I primarily play as if my character is a poor commander struggling to make ends meet, always on the look out for opportunities for salvage or profit, while helping brave freedom fighters resist the might of the Evil Galactic Federation or helping to bring the light of freedom, prosperity, and integrity to independent systems.
Which is ironic, given how credit reward hyper-inflation has turned her into a billionaire dilettante. Seriously, reward inflation is so bad right now I can make several million while traveling from point A to point B in the Bubble with no extra effort on my part. I also enjoy exploration, so she occasionally heads into deep space for several weeks, and I've recently returned from a two year expedition as part of DW2.
The other aspect of this game where I blaze my own trail is when it comes to Engineering. IMO, upgrading anything beyond grade three (except for your FSD) is overkill for most activities in this game, and the stuff to do that is everywhere, just waiting for you to pick it up as you go about your business. It's just that players are too busy playing in the "forum recommended way" with "forum recommended builds" to take advantage of this. And it feels like to me that the "forum recommended way" is a strategy to maximize your time to watch Netflix, as opposed to making the most of your time in the game. In addition, using G5 engineering for most activities in this game is also a good way to develop bad habits when challenging those activities where G5 becomes necessary.
Because IMO the best way to play this game is to pursue your goals in parallel, rather than in series. Superpower Rank, Pilots Federation ranks, credits, engineer unlocks, engineering materials, personal skills, and even engineering itself... developing all these things are best done along side each other, rather than grinding reputation to unlock a rank-locked ship, then grinding credits to buy the ship, and then grinding away at an engineer to unlock them, and then grind away... and away... and away...
Yes, there is some RNG in this game, but its effects are minimized if you work towards developing your ship in parallel with other goals. If you don't need a particular material now, you'll need it later date. This was as true in the original iteration of Engineers as it is in the current QOL enhanced version. And today, if it turns out you don't need it later either, you can always trade it for the stuff you do need.
Want to unlock a bounty-locked engineer? Don't grind away using the "forum recommended method" of visiting a low-risk mining hotspot and using the police to help you kill your target. This is a good way of artificially increasing your game's difficulty level while keeping your own skills stagnant. Instead visit "weapons fire" POIs of the appropriate difficulty while running missions in a multi-role ship to increase your superpower rank, or allow NPC pirates to interdict you, and kill them without help from the police. Use a limpet, or cargo scoop, to gather the resulting debris.
Take a mission to "kill x number of ships" mission along with the missions you enjoy, and rather than farm them at a system's beacon, just follow their high wakes out of a station, or interdict them while in Supercruise, and then gather the resulting debris. Take SRV (or on foot) oriented missions, and while on the surface of a planet, use your WAVE scanner to grab nearby metallic meteorites, or in settlements to steal components and data, rather than relogging to farm them. Don't be afraid to fail these missions once you've run out of time. The important thing is to do the activities when the missions generate the opportunity to do them, and view completing them as a bonus. Any reputation lost will be more than offset by the missions you succeed at.
By the time you've got enough credits to buy and outfit your next ship, you've gathered enough materials and data to engineer your ship to at least G3. Save the G5 materials for later. You want to develop your personal skills at the game alongside developing your ship.
As for the idea that you can't progress without joining a group... this is only true for the content Frontier adds for the community as a whole. Which is as it should be. Frontier should not be adding special content for individual players, or even individual player groups, because Elite Dangerous is not a traditional MMO where every player will "save the city from the aliens" at levels 1-4; then "save the city again from gangsters" at levels 15-19; and then "save the city again from demons" at levels 35-38; ... to use an example from an MMO I played before ED.
ED is a wide open sandbox, and the reason to play a wide open sandbox is to create your own story. To... dare I say it... blaze your own trail, rather than follow the exact same story beats millions have followed before you, and millions will afterwards. Which is what I've done. My whole character's modus operandi is to mess with the Federation via BGS manipulation, or to help promote Imperial factions in independent systems. You can do this solo, like I usually do, or to join a player group with similar goals... which I have also done.
But the important thing to do is decide what you want to do, not wait around for Frontier to tell you what they want you to do. Which is one of the downsides of wide-open sandboxes. Not everyone is a self-starter, or able to craft their own narrative from disparate fragments of information.
And don't rely on sites like eddb.io to play your game for you. Ship component and commodity availability is deterministic, not random, thanks to being procedurally generated. Learning what conditions generate which allows you to easily search for them, but you'll never learn what those conditions are by using these sites. And quite frankly, I think traveling in-game to a likely candidate is much more fun, and gives you more opportunities for adventure, than going to a website for guaranteed results.
True, sometimes you'll fail because you overlooked something, but as the old saying goes: if you're not failing occasionally, you're not really pushing your skills to your limit. Which is why my completely fictional tourism company's motto in this game is: "If you're not willing to damage your ship, you're not really in a hurry."
That was a real disaster. I can't understand why Frontier was unable to adapt to 15.000 happy explorers hopes waiting for a great experience. Instead they knockt all these players into their faces for no reason.
Yes, we were. But there's a Hutton's Orbital round trip worth of difference in the event being sold one way only to be changed at the last minute. Or if it was always planned to go down as it did, it was disingenuous at best.
Is it possible to get to this sector now by FC? This was all before my time in ED.