2.1 generated very little interest on Steam. Player numbers still in the dirt.
- Thread starter 4Corvus
- Start date
For a properly managed long development project, I really don't think it's remotely the case that your objective is the most profit or largest market interest.
The idea that it's about making as much money as possible and getting as much mass appeal as humanly possible is more what people who don't develop commercial projects or those still getting into such things think it's about. Doing so frequently leads to projects being significant failures, especially in MMO or on-going development projects where the continued cost to develop and support the project is on-going and only dips slightly at release.
Really what a properly managed project focuses on is sustainability.
Unless you're a huge entity like EA/Ubisoft and the like that mostly function off of covering developer investments several times over through pre-sales nowadays, you don't go out there with the intention of appealing to as wide a chunk of the market as possible and then scramble to make sure your project caters to as wide a spectrum as possible at the cost of generalising everything so much that it doesn't really cater toward anything in particular.
Instead you decide on a niche audience of the potential market that you feel your project could do well at appealing to, determine how many unit sales/subscriptions/Cash shop transactions are needed across a certain period of time to sustain development and upkeep, and then focus on ensuring that what you're creating offers enough engagement in the areas that are likely to appeal to the targeted niche audience to provide enough assurances in reaching those determined target goals.
Anything else beyond the sustainability targets for long term planning is mostly just noise and beyond the scope of ensuring things continue to tick along smoothly for the slated duration of the project.
Even IF you could make some changes and see an initial increase 5 fold in active players, if the changes made negatively impact the projects capability to still offer a strong and engaging draw for the core niche audience over time just for the sake of introducing short term players who will move on and lose interest the moment a game more focused toward catering to another niche aspect arrives... then it's a bad decision as it will greatly damage the ability to sustain the project, and anyone with a decent head on their shoulders would never make the call to make such changes.
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Oh look, the steam-herd has drifted over to the "next new thing"(tm). About par for the course. So what? There were enough of us playing ED before it ever hit steam for it to remain viable, there's even more of us not playing it through steam now. We and FD can do without them just fine. About the only value of a steam chart is to print it out on soft paper and hang it in the outhouse. It sure doesn't say anything about the general state of this game.
While this is a fine logic, but i think E-D currently bleeds those core niche players (like myself). I play almost only and exclusivly space games, so E-D did hold great interesst for me. But none of my RL friends did stick to the game even before and the 2 that thought about coming back after 2.1 where driven away by the horror stories (and yes, i added my own to it).
Edit: i am currently actively seeking for a replacement because i rapidly lose interesst in E-D and Frontier didnt do anything to prevent this. The core game mechanics are still borked in a lot of ways and Frontier keeps adding more of the stuff i dont like, so i decided to move along. E-D just is not heading into a direction i am willing to follow. Which is sad because those 8 weeks i did sink into the game since launch now feel like a colossal waste of time.
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Who the hell is "Steam"?
This is so true... I am also really stuck with 2.1. After a difficult start and lots of learning and asking help on the forum (thanx to you guys!), I finally could afford an ASP and it was totally upgraded. But since 2.1, I fly a totally downgraded defense ASP to avoid large Insurance costs, I don't dare to take any missions on (always a good recipe for loosing a ship), I do not dare to fly to a far system (won't make it any way) and since most of my mining runs also result in death as soon as I try to bring the goodies back, most of the time I spend more time on the forum (hoping to see that announcement that 2.1 is downgarded to 1.6 -where it was hard, but doable), then playing
It's not that simple, they have backers to think about, not just themselves.
Sorry guys, but the OP has a point. Out of my circle of friends I play online with 7 picked up ED excluding me and I'm the only one still playing. All of them are dead ringers for the type of people you'd expect to stick with a game for a long time and all of them love games like ED.
They left for the following reasons:
Combat is too easy.
No enjoyable content.
Repetitive gameplay with no rewards.
Lackluster multiplayer features.
And I'll never convince them to come back because FDev's development cycle is so incredibly slow they've lost interest in the game. They had a mediocre, lackluster experience with it the first time around and it's been so long that that memory has soured in their minds and only gotten worse.
I don't even try, to be honest, because I know what they expect out of a game and they're not going to get it out of ED. One of them asked me last week how the game was going, said he heard they had a big patch or something. I told him it's still the best screensaver he's ever spent $60 on and to wait and see what Season 3 brings.
That's what I've been using it for for almost a year now. Until FDev starts paying attention to why players are leaving instead of catering to people who stay hoping they'll be here forever the player retention rate in ED is going to remain abysmal.
Oh, and all 7 of those previous players linked their game to Steam, even if they bought it directly from FDev. They use it for tracking what everyone is doing and communication.
They left for the following reasons:
Combat is too easy.
No enjoyable content.
Repetitive gameplay with no rewards.
Lackluster multiplayer features.
And I'll never convince them to come back because FDev's development cycle is so incredibly slow they've lost interest in the game. They had a mediocre, lackluster experience with it the first time around and it's been so long that that memory has soured in their minds and only gotten worse.
I don't even try, to be honest, because I know what they expect out of a game and they're not going to get it out of ED. One of them asked me last week how the game was going, said he heard they had a big patch or something. I told him it's still the best screensaver he's ever spent $60 on and to wait and see what Season 3 brings.
That's what I've been using it for for almost a year now. Until FDev starts paying attention to why players are leaving instead of catering to people who stay hoping they'll be here forever the player retention rate in ED is going to remain abysmal.
Oh, and all 7 of those previous players linked their game to Steam, even if they bought it directly from FDev. They use it for tracking what everyone is doing and communication.
9 out of 10 people who bought Elite don't play it. Is that normal for an MMO?
Edit: Had a look and some other games and it isn't that far off being normal. I see Ark Evolved is up at 2 out of 10 owners playing regularly, Elder Scrolls is at 1 out of 10 like Elite. Didn't know it was so normal to purchase an MMO and not play it!
They have diddly squat to think about backers, they 'donated' their money. that's it. You don't get your art book, so what.
I am a backer , unless you are talking about the stock backers whom dont normaly put money on a game but a company in genral
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My art book
I forgot about it for a moment...
Dear 4Corvus,
Absolutely don't want to ruin your moment here, but Steam players are only tiny, tiny bits of Elite Dangerous' player base. Very tiny part...
For you (and the rest of you guys) to have a bit bigger picture:
1) your Steam's stats are showing 3,218 players having fun with the game during last 30 days (as for 08/06/2016);
2) during last 30 minutes though there were around 4,150 people browsing our forum *
2) during last 30 minutes though there were around 4,150 people browsing our forum
*Do I need to convince you, this forum users are only tiny part of Elite's multi-platform gamers? Nah..., I dont think so!
The fun part with playing with numbers is you need to take a lot of variables into your consideration before jumping into conclusions. For almost all of us in here this "a lot" is way above our knowledge of crucial data. So let's just don't!
Anyways thank you for your imput 4Corvus!
*) Ohhh..., right!! The source!
Here you go: CLICK ME (I'm not a trojan!)
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Hmmm, Steam says just under 1100 hours played.
ED says 18 weeks, 5 days and change...one of them is lying.
I'm scared to do the maths tbh...but that's 3000 hours plus?
Welp, I should go outside.
ED says 18 weeks, 5 days and change...one of them is lying.
I'm scared to do the maths tbh...but that's 3000 hours plus?
Welp, I should go outside.
Every thought it's not E.D......but Steam that's dieing lol
Lying? More likely you've been playing since before Elite was available on steam and added it later which would account for the lower figures from steam.
Dear 4Corvus,
Absolutely don't want to ruin your moment here, but Steam players are only tiny, tiny bits of Elite Dangerous' player base. Very tiny part...
For you (and the rest of you guys) to have a bit bigger picture:
1) your Steam's stats are showing 3,218 players having fun with the game during last 30 days (as for 08/06/2016);
2) during last 30 minutes though there were around 4,150 people browsing our forum
Do I need to convince you, this forum users are only tiny part of Elite's multi-platform gamers? Nah..., I dont think so!
The fun part with playing with numbers is you need to take a lot of variables into your consideration before jumping into conclusions. For almost all of us in here this "a lot" is way above our knowledge of crucial data. So let's just don't!
Anyways thank you for your imput 4Corvus!
*) Ohhh..., right!! The source!
I am not going to comment on how many people use the steam launcher, or how many people currently play the game.
Because i don't have those numbers, and neither do you.
But "only tiny, tiny bits of Elite Dangerous' player base. Very tiny part..." ?
What do you base that on ?
The game has over 750.000 registered owners on Steam !
And you have no way of knowing how many of them play via the Frontier launcher, or even don't play at all for that matter.
And as I already pointed out, you are but one individual, and given what you just told us, a very biased individual.