Not even going to bother reading/watching it, this is the guy that put mining equipment (including refinery) on an explorer!
O7
A message to Frontier From D2EA
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O7
Do you think he actually believes that he represents the entire player base? That is a bold claim.
I don't believe any one believes that their voice is consistent with the entire player base.
I'm pretty sure within the context of his own community poll (an obviously unscientific - not random - ) sample, there are a diversity of opinions, and he is not claiming they all have the same opinion. It is factual for him to say 64% neutral to negative. It would also be factual to say 82% neutral to positive on his poll.
This is a sample of players that are interested in Elite Dangerous content, and are actively engaging with his content related to Elite Dangerous. This isn't the entire player base, but they are clearly connected to the game, and willing to express an opinion. These aren't steam players that have expressed this opinion on the core game:
In my opinion, I'd read his poll results as mixed to slightly positive.
His baseline interpretation about steam chart trends are not in dispute.
People that claim "it's summer" don't really have a solid argument. There are many games that are absolutely killing it right now in terms of player numbers. Summer doesn't seem to be affecting them, so I'd say that is an off the mark claim.
Did he conduct polls on the most popular changes that would have an impact on player numbers? No. I wish that he had.
We aren't talking about a Y type commentary that is a constant stream of adolescent fun poking for entertainment value. We talking about a person that would like to see the game growing, healthy and attracting new players.
To claim that the game is thriving, and growing and engaging large numbers of new players is not supported by any evidence. Is DTEA making an effort to ask FDEV to re-engage with the broader player base? In my opinion yes.
This guy is a no joke code writer and science based career guy. Not seeing the "he's doing this just for clicks" as a viable argument. If it was Y, I'd completely agree with that characterization.
Irrespective of the specific suggestions he is making to recover player interest, I do think there is a sense that the clock is ticking on this wonderful game.
The question is probably more about how the exit is conducted at this point.
Launcher issues being responsible for any significant loss of players would be addressed very quickly.
Such issues can also be fairly common, especially on the forums, without being widespread.
There are hundreds of tons of hull armor on my CMDR's explorer!
I'm the Emperor- your faith in FD will be your undoing.....
But more seriously, there is only so much I'm willing to put up with. Only FD, who incredibly had nearly all of the correct answers in the game then take them out of the game and put worse replacements in. Don't get me started on Powerplay, CQC, C+P, general gameplay structure......
Call it what you will, most* 'messengers' Ive had dealings with in this game are frankly useless roadblocks that FD either have too much faith in or think they know everything about all features.
*not all
Content creator are no better or worse than any other individual. They are just expressing a personal opinion. They have no more or less right than any other individual, they just do it with more flair and creativity than your average forum whinger.
This is FDev we're talking about and it's possible that the new players tolerance of janky 3rd party launchers has dropped over time or something is breaking worse than before due to steam/windows updates.
The fact that's not really a value-assessment for the game (and exploration) continues to disappoint me.Not even going to bother reading/watching it, this is the guy that put mining equipment (including refinery) on an explorer!
O7
There was nothing new on U16. The main news on the stream was they are purging some of the longer running tickets on the issue tracker that are just too difficult to solve.
Im sorry but i think you will be in the minority. I completely agree with DTEAs points, and i would say most of the community will also.
Couldn't find much info either. There might be a bug fix update between U16 and U17 and Frontier plan to update the launcher next week (server status status
). Nothing on U16, no sneak peeks.So much for the stream's tag line "Let's prepare for U16!".
Picking out these points from the summary.
- the war got a good amount of initial interest (one of their most successful releases) though was obviously not going to be for everyone
- it's not finished yet and "not finishing things" is such a common complaint given to Frontier that I can't blame them for trying it once to see what happened
- equally, it seems that it wasn't popular enough for "the Thargoids might in a decade or two take over the bubble" to be a track they continued on, nor even the lesser "players might one day need to successfully defend an important system"; the balance has been adapted to set the stalemate zone fairly small so that it doesn't interfere with gameplay very much unless you specifically want to face Thargoids.
Having started, I think they need to see it through; but I'd agree that the "all Thargoids all the time" focus has been a problem (even on the plot rather than feature side, Galnet being two articles a week rather than four is not ideal; hopefully this is because the writers are busy doing a lot of writing for something else big later, but...)
If it's not working out even in those terms for someone, the correct request is "make carrier jumps use credits rather than Tritium", not "make Tritium easier/cheaper/stronger so I need to get it less often" because they did that at least twice already (plus a little bit more with the Colonia Bridge) and it's made no significant difference to the number of complaints.
I've been on several group exploration expeditions, I've spent a lot of time as part of various exploration communities, and I don't understand Explorers either, so I don't see why Frontier should.
I know a lot about what they don't want (in terms of collective preferences, any individual may be fine or even positive about one or more of these, which is the problem):
- exploration tools which aren't "one click and done"
- anything involving any level of hazard, or any requirement to carry equipment, or possibly anything released at the same time as another non-exploration feature which does involve weapons
- anything like Tritium mining which involves interrupting the exploration with anything else
- anything closer than 5000 LY to the bubble
- anything sufficiently common (e.g. Odyssey plants) that the novelty will wear off in a few weeks even if you haven't personally found all of them by then
- anything sufficiently rare (e.g. the rarer NSPs) that most explorers will never personally discover one
...and that certainly rules out basically everything added to the game after 2.0, but doesn't tell me much about the alternative.
(Yeah, yeah, fully-procedural ELWs each with its own unique lifeforms, because procedural generation is magic. Also a space-pony but only if it doesn't have any mass)
There's also the DW2 scale to consider here: DW2 was an absolutely massive group of explorers and indeed players in general, full credit to the organisers for everything needed to plan and coordinate that, the largest player-organised event by an extremely substantial margin, it broke the record (by miles) for mining CG tonnage, and carved thick tracks still visible today on discovered-systems maps of the areas it passed through. Judging by the squadron leaderboards of the time, it was responsible for around half of all exploration activity in the galaxy while it was running (and that includes "new player scans in the bubble", so probably well over half of active deep space explorers were on DW2)
- its total participation was less than a well-attended CG, and around half of that of a top CG. A little unfair as a CG can require an hour as opposed to a multi-month commitment, of course.
- the impact on in-bubble traffic and other activity measures was just a few percent, and barely noticeable.
There are substantial (thousands! that's a lot of people) deep-space exploration communities in Elite Dangerous ... but almost all of the players at any time are in the bubble where there's other things to do as well.
Now, given the likely size of the Thargoid War communities, I'm very definitely not saying that next year shouldn't be Exploration Year - if the AX fans got a year, there's enough explorers to justify that too! - just that it won't be what turns around falling player numbers or whatever the hope is for it.
Thargoid War has certainly been an interesting risk for Frontier (and at this point they need to take some risks), and it feels like they've ended up stuck in an awkward place as a result.
- the war got a good amount of initial interest (one of their most successful releases) though was obviously not going to be for everyone
- it's not finished yet and "not finishing things" is such a common complaint given to Frontier that I can't blame them for trying it once to see what happened
- equally, it seems that it wasn't popular enough for "the Thargoids might in a decade or two take over the bubble" to be a track they continued on, nor even the lesser "players might one day need to successfully defend an important system"; the balance has been adapted to set the stalemate zone fairly small so that it doesn't interfere with gameplay very much unless you specifically want to face Thargoids.
Having started, I think they need to see it through; but I'd agree that the "all Thargoids all the time" focus has been a problem (even on the plot rather than feature side, Galnet being two articles a week rather than four is not ideal; hopefully this is because the writers are busy doing a lot of writing for something else big later, but...)
The only purpose of having carrier jumps require Tritium at all (as opposed to just costing the equivalent number of credits) is to make moving them outside of the bubble more difficult - in the same way that the Military Drive in FE2/FFE was great inside the bubble but terrible for exploration (the excessively overpowered Class 4 aside). Inside the bubble, a full tank will do at least eight jumps and takes ten minutes to get - maybe nice for immersion but if they'd missed it out there wouldn't be many threads asking for refuelling to be added. And it's already been increased in efficiency twice from the original design, so that it's already almost possible for a fully-fuelled no-services carrier to get from the bubble to anywhere in the galaxy and back on that single load.
If it's not working out even in those terms for someone, the correct request is "make carrier jumps use credits rather than Tritium", not "make Tritium easier/cheaper/stronger so I need to get it less often" because they did that at least twice already (plus a little bit more with the Colonia Bridge) and it's made no significant difference to the number of complaints.
Sure, but define "exploration" (maybe the video did?). Odyssey added over a hundred different plant types (not counting colour variations) and a wide range of extra landable planets; before that Beyond added a whole bunch of NSPs and their various contents; both were extremely rapidly dismissed by Explorers as an example of Frontier not understanding them ... which was an improvement on the various bits of near-bubble mystery/research content which aren't even considered as exploration.
I've been on several group exploration expeditions, I've spent a lot of time as part of various exploration communities, and I don't understand Explorers either, so I don't see why Frontier should.
I know a lot about what they don't want (in terms of collective preferences, any individual may be fine or even positive about one or more of these, which is the problem):
- exploration tools which aren't "one click and done"
- anything involving any level of hazard, or any requirement to carry equipment, or possibly anything released at the same time as another non-exploration feature which does involve weapons
- anything like Tritium mining which involves interrupting the exploration with anything else
- anything closer than 5000 LY to the bubble
- anything sufficiently common (e.g. Odyssey plants) that the novelty will wear off in a few weeks even if you haven't personally found all of them by then
- anything sufficiently rare (e.g. the rarer NSPs) that most explorers will never personally discover one
...and that certainly rules out basically everything added to the game after 2.0, but doesn't tell me much about the alternative.
(Yeah, yeah, fully-procedural ELWs each with its own unique lifeforms, because procedural generation is magic. Also a space-pony but only if it doesn't have any mass)
There's also the DW2 scale to consider here: DW2 was an absolutely massive group of explorers and indeed players in general, full credit to the organisers for everything needed to plan and coordinate that, the largest player-organised event by an extremely substantial margin, it broke the record (by miles) for mining CG tonnage, and carved thick tracks still visible today on discovered-systems maps of the areas it passed through. Judging by the squadron leaderboards of the time, it was responsible for around half of all exploration activity in the galaxy while it was running (and that includes "new player scans in the bubble", so probably well over half of active deep space explorers were on DW2)
- its total participation was less than a well-attended CG, and around half of that of a top CG. A little unfair as a CG can require an hour as opposed to a multi-month commitment, of course.
- the impact on in-bubble traffic and other activity measures was just a few percent, and barely noticeable.
There are substantial (thousands! that's a lot of people) deep-space exploration communities in Elite Dangerous ... but almost all of the players at any time are in the bubble where there's other things to do as well.
Now, given the likely size of the Thargoid War communities, I'm very definitely not saying that next year shouldn't be Exploration Year - if the AX fans got a year, there's enough explorers to justify that too! - just that it won't be what turns around falling player numbers or whatever the hope is for it.
I'm not sure that's a problem with not having a roadmap; if we'd had a roadmap, they'd still have discovered that it was more work than initially planned, and needed to issue a major revision to it, which would have made the earlier roadmap not worth having. They've said we'll get another update on where it's at near the end of the year (so presumably after U17 is released).
Understandable since of the top 10, one is already fixed and six clearly are never going anywhere for various reasons, but I'm not clear why they need to bother - aren't people discouraged enough from reporting bugs already?
The tales I could tell you would put many a foot through a monitor."Those people that think they know it all, annoy us that do know it all"
I'm all ears!
Give it a few years.I'm all ears!
I cannot possibly know what D2EA or any other content creator believes or not. But the exact quote from his video is: "Two thirds of the player community doesn't really care much about that Thargoid content". Look it up, it is at 1:26 in the video.
That's a bold claim. If he had meant "two thirds of my community" or if he even had thought that his poll probably isn't representative, he should have said it. But he chose his words they way he did, and it was en edited video, not live content. So he had full control about what he put out there, and he chose to speak for the whole community. Which he doesn't. He speaks for his paper plane building explorer spreadsheat community at best.
Also, a few sentences later, he again claims to know how "a large part of the player base feel like they are being alienated" by the focus on the Thargoid war. Again, speaking for the whole player base. At that point, either he really doesn't know his fallacy, or he is doing it because he really thinks he is speaking for the community.
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