Player Retention

Red Rocket

Red Rocket
The other day I was going through my friend’s player list of over 150 and noticed that a very large percentage of commanders have not been on for months, commanders I used to play with almost daily not logging on for months. Only about 20 were active in the last month.

Then I was reading a post that mentioned over 12 million copies have been sold and it got me thinking. What can be done to improve Player Retention
( Note I Edited the original post to remove mistaken date about daily players count.)



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.

Player Groups Save The Day.
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.

Frontier put together a CC to build a station at the center of the Galaxy. Wildly successful and covered by all the gamming media it became one of the biggest gamming events ever. Frontier how many copies did you sell because of DW2, a lot, I guess.

DW2 became my most memorable gamming experience of all time.

Sadly, Erimus has said DW3 is postponed indefinitely; quote “ The Game has lost its sole Soul “ oops, my bad

There lots of other player groups that add content and keep this game current, AXI, Buckyball Racing Team, Hutton Truckers, Fuel Rats, Hull Seals, just to name a few.
Frontier you have sold 12 million copies, what are you doing to bring in these players, 0.10 % is a sad showing when there is much more potential.
You just did a CG that got 15,000 commanders involved, Great work Fdev.
Doesn’t that show that people are looking for content.

What do you all think, for me new game content is what is needed to get this great game back on track.
Fdev bringing new content and helping player groups provide exciting events.

Any Thoughts
 
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LeoBartlet

LeoBartlet
Red Rocket said:
Sadly, Erimus has said DW3 is postponed indefinitely; quote “ The Game has lost its sole “
Click to expand...

Solea_solea_1.jpg


Sad sole is sad :(
 

Rubbernuke

Rubbernuke
Red Rocket said:
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 15,00 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.
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Well if dumb idiots who can't read Galnet ignore warnings like:

NEW ANGRY THARGOIDS SIGHTED, MIGHT BE DANGEROUS

and get salty about years later then good riddance.

What puts people off is the unrelenting bugs, technical problems as well as lumpy and uneven development.
 

Riverside

Riverside
New players provide income for FDev, and if they play for a while they may buy some cosmetics and/or pDLCs.

However existing players that have already bought what they are going to buy are a cost to FDev, in terms of server rental.

So the ideal ED player buys the game, plays for a while (hopefully buying some ARX) then moves on to other games, or if they continue to play they draw in more players or act as content (training, allies or enemies for other players).

I don't think long term en masse player retention is what FDev's business model is aiming for.
 

Chaparral

Chaparral
Riverside said:
New players provide income for FDev, and if they play for a while they may buy some cosmetics and/or pDLCs.

However existing players that have already bought what they are going to buy are a cost to FDev, in terms of server rental.

So the ideal ED player buys the game, plays for a while (hopefully buying some ARX) then moves on to other games, or if they continue to play they draw in more players or act as content (training, allies or enemies for other players).

I don't think long term en masse player retention is what FDev's business model is aiming for.
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Try as a might, I just can't find how many copies of EDO have sold. If a significant fraction of those non-retained EDH players decline to buy EDO, that probably isn't a good business model.
 

Christopher Roberto

C
They don't seem to care when they shed players, it's bizarre. Like, I started with the Epic freebie and that thing was severely broken due to a pretty simple issue with EOS auth token renewal resulting in Epic players getting kicked with Scarlet Krait up to a dozen times an hour if doing rep missions. The people I joined with all quit because of it, was just me left and after several months(!) of this I gave up and transferred to a Steam account just so I could play.

If I was giving away millions of copies to bring in users to replace the ones I'd already shed from neglect I'd have had that hotfixed on day 1, would have been top priority, otherwise what's the point of doing it at all? Should have only taken a couple minutes as the problem and fix were obvious from the netlog. There's some deep dysfunction in management at Frontier.
 

Mav359

Mav359
Some of the best in game events like Solome', the thargoid interdictions, bancle sigthings, the thargoid bases & guardians were some of the best times in the game for me, events like these dont happen anymore

I brought this up before christmas, suggested, Stellar Events such as Super-novas, comet impacts and resulting planetary evac, black hole formations etc....

The ingame community events are great and a testiment to community and before anything good ever comes again they need to fix it but there needs to be FDEV driven content as well and that just doesnt happen anymore.
 

Red Rocket

Red Rocket
Rubbernuke said:
Well if dumb idiots who can't read Galnet ignore warnings like:

NEW ANGRY THARGOIDS SIGHTED, MIGHT BE DANGEROUS

and get salty about years later then good riddance.

What puts people off is the unrelenting bugs, technical problems as well as lumpy and uneven development.
Click to expand...
After weeks of build up for the trip and so much anticipation Fdev realized their mistake tried to down play the event with these Galnet articles but Commanders still wanted to go. They loaded up anti Thargoid built ships and were ready for action. The problem was it never made it to the Cone Sector that's what upset many.

My point is 15,000 commanders were onboard and excited about Elite and let down by Poor planning.

I agree that the game has many technical problems but that shouldn't keep us from enjoying the game, and well planned events will help.
 

Shir

Shir
The most debatable thing was releasing a first person shooter expansion. It's really a different genre that many elite players aren't really interested in. Having so many bugs that they are still trying to fix it one year and 10 patches later didn't help either ..

I've always found it strange that Elite had so many things spot on in the beginning, and many features coming later didn't really make it (powerplay, cqc, wings, guilds, even thargoids). You don't see that very often in other games. Probably it takes someone close to the company to figure out why this happened.
 

nemolomen

nemolomen
Chaparral said:
Try as a might, I just can't find how many copies of EDO have sold. If a significant fraction of those non-retained EDH players decline to buy EDO, that probably isn't a good business model.
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The Odyssey DLC, taken on its own, appeals to a different player type than the spaceship game alone. I like both aspects and so do the two other players I brought into the game less than 18 months ago.
 
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