A problem that I have with this game is that it's too slow

[MAAD DAWG]

I see this argument put forward a lot by those who want a faster, easier game. I am an ordinary person. I work for a living. I have a family. I have many comitments and I even manage a bit of a social life. I am lucky if I can play more than an hour of ED at a time, but I wouldnt want to make it any quicker or easier to achieve any thing.

I find the flying enjoyable, as I do most of the game play so why would I want to skip any of it? The fact that it takes a long time to achieve someting means I get more time enjoying the game. If you are not enjoying it, perhaps you need to find a game you do enjoy.

And maybe you need to actually read my posts. Who said I don't enjoy the game?

If you're not enjoying my posts, perhaps you need to find a post you do enjoy.

 

[Toshi_TNE]

Yeah there's a lot of grinding, but the grind is the game. You grind for rank, you grind for money. You get that ship you wanted, then you grind for modules. Then you grind to unlock engineers to mod those modules. But after all that grinding, you'll find yourself swimming in credits and nothing to use them on. You can only buy ships and modules, and you got those already.
So be thankful for the grind. At least it gives you something to do.

 

[AkimuMC]

Yeah there's a lot of grinding, but the grind is the game. You grind for rank, you grind for money. You get that ship you wanted, then you grind for modules. Then you grind to unlock engineers to mod those modules. But after all that grinding, you'll find yourself swimming in credits and nothing to use them on. You can only buy ships and modules, and you got those already.
So be thankful for the grind. At least it gives you something to do.

I disagree. I have only done a "grind" once in this game, and it was to get back from Sag A before I went crazy... "Grind" is a matter of perspective. I "enjoy" (I know, crazy concept enjoying the game) doing assassination missions and missions up my rep with powers, which in turn will increase my rank, which will also allow me to buy better ships, at the same time I am gaining credits... I mean if you want to grind it you can... I just don't think grinding this game is a requirement to enjoy it... It isn't for me anyway.

 

[GraXXoR]

One of the biggest problems with the time commit to successfully play the game is that I believe it is limiting FD's sales of the game.

Ordinary people work for a living. That alone limits the amount of time they can devote to any game. I've tried to interest family, friends, and co-workers. They see the graphics, I explain the game, and they get interested...until they learn about the time commitment.

I read that FD has sold over a million copies of this game. Why not 10 million copies? It is arguably the best starship simulator in existence, with a terrific game built around it. So, why haven't sales been off the charts?

Consider a player that can earn $1 million credits per hour. To buy an A-rated Python will require upwards of 200 million credits. If an ordinary person can only play 5 hours per week, that means they will have to play for 40 weeks to buy that ship. That's too long for most people to stay focused. The carrot is too far out of reach to be motivating.

I contend that the most successful games are the ones sold by word-of-mouth advertising. But it's hard to generate enthusiasm in potential purchasers when they find out the time commitment. Most people have lives. They don't live to play games.

As players, we see Elite Dangerous as a game. Frontier Development sees it as a business, a source of revenue. F.D. could produce a lot more revenue by selling many more copies of this game. To do that, they must make it appeal to more people.

I had more to say about this subject in another post: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Lost-Business-Opportunity?highlight=maad+dawg

Just because a game sells more doesn't make it a better game *For me*

IMHO There are too many instant things in this game already.

Instant engineering, instant synthesis, instant loading of cargo, instant swapping of 80T power plants. Instant telepresence is coming soon, too. Ewww...

One of the things that made this game great *for me* has already been nerfed... slow, methodical progression from a Sidewinder to Eagle, then to Hauler or Adder is now a rapid, breakneck advancement to an Asp within a couple of weeks without even getting to know the ships' idiocincracies.... they have become mere stepping stones to even larger stepping stones.

So, I respectfully disagree.

I like this game exactly because it doesn't appeal to the plebs. It would just become space CoD.
Yuck.

If it appealed to my wife, i would probably hate it just because she has no patience for anything.

People equate massive sales with a great game. I beg to differ.


The Kardashians are popular. Doesn't make them great people.

 

[MAAD DAWG]

As much as we like it as a game, ED is a product sold by a business, first and foremost.

Without a steady stream of new revenues to support an expensive engineering staff, this game will not survive.

The company can't afford to keep investing money for development and maintenance, can't afford to maintain an infrastructure of servers and networking gear, with just the sales of ship paint jobs and bobble heads.

Frontier Development has to generate new sales, new purchases, of the game.

 

[MAAD DAWG]

How best to do this...?

I've proposed several ideas to FD: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/318195-Elite-Dangerous-A-Lost-Business-Opportunity?highlight=maad+dawg

Whatever they do, they're going to have to get more people to buy it. That will almost certainly mean that the game will have to appeal to more people. Or maybe their marketing department needs to do some target market analysis (if it hasn't already been done) and determine what it would take to increase sales. But whatever tack this effort takes, it is probably going to mean changes in the game.

A lot of current players won't like this. But FD is not a not-for-profit company, plus it has to at least break even. Players that bought the game are history. They're not a source of significant, new revenues.

It's either increase sales or the game will most likely die.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

A lot of current players won't like this. But FD is not a not-for-profit company, plus it has to at least break even. Players that bought the game are history. They're not a source of significant, new revenues.

It's either increase sales or the game will most likely die.

So I'm getting season 3 for free?

 

[Ian Phillips]

So I'm getting season 3 for free?

Lifetime pass?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Lifetime pass?

Don't mind if I do. Sugar, no milk please.

Players that bought the game don't all have one of these.

 

[MAAD DAWG]

Ziggy, we might be getting dark servers. Time will tell.

 

[Cosmo]

This is the biggest problem with the game, since getting a new ship doesn't happen as often as it should. I don't think you should get a new ship every session, but the current time to get a new ship is a bit too slow.

One thing I agree is Frontier should reduce the grind and make acquisition of new ships faster.

Late in the game people have piles of credits so the issue is a lack of money sinks and expensive stuff. Solution is player owned installations and such really expensive things. Guilds and territory control is another money sink cause guilds will spend vast sums to defend their territory.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Ziggy, we might be getting dark servers. Time will tell.

Dark servers ... ominous.

How does that support: "Players that bought the game are history"?

 

[MAAD DAWG]

Dark servers ... ominous.

How does that support: "Players that bought the game are history"?

It doesn't. If there are insufficient new revenues from sales of the game, then it won't matter that you once bought the game.

FD needs a steady stream of revenue to support their maintenance and development of the game. If people want to help FD, buy 2 or 3 copies of the game, buy more bobble heads, or just donate money to FD.

 

[TheNavvie]

In Elite, you aren't the Hero. The fate of the galaxy doesn't alter based on your actions. Heck, your actions aren't even a footnote in the recorded history of Elite.

You're a regular Joe. A very small cog in a galactically big (dark) wheel. Travelling between star systems trying to earn a few credits to better your ship, or buy a bigger, faster, whatever, one.

If you need to be the Hero. If you need your actions to make a significant difference to the game world or you need to "win"... perhaps Elite isn't the game for you.

Elite is a marathon, not a sprint. A journey, not a destination.

 

[Iskariot]

It's slower then it should be to travel through a system, it's slower than it should be to go from a RES and back, it's slow to earn money. This is the biggest problem with the game, since getting a new ship doesn't happen as often as it should. I don't think you should get a new ship every session, but the current time to get a new ship is a bit too slow. New ships keep the game varied, and when you are in the same ship for too long the game loses that variety. But anyway, that's my problem with the game out

I strongly disagree with everything you said.

Money making opportunities are all over the place now.
To my dismay people get Pythons within a week and even faster... in a single weekend.
Some ask for advise to outfit their Corvette, because they consider themselves relatively new players, their combat rank being 'Harmless'.
This should not be possible. It shows that it is far to easy to make money and that there are not enough costs and spending opportunities in the game. I would like docking fees to return to Elite for example... just like in the prequel games.

It took me a year to get in a Python and that was just fine because this is not an 'end game' type of game.
While working towards my Python I did what I wanted to do and tried out all kinds of stuff, flew all kinds of ships and I never fixated on getting new ships.
I just played the game.

The space travel in the game is exactly like it should be. It offers super fast in system travel and at the same time it lets you experience the enormity of the universe.
I would like to see a few changes to the games' space travel. I want more influence as a player in supercruise and I would like the ability to do minijumps to other stars in the same system (with limitations, as I described elsewhere).

 

[Garagiste]

Think 2 years had gone by before I got my Python, it's the newest ship I have I know that much.
Having all of the ships is pretty much the only end goal there is, and if A rating them all takes me 20 years?

Fine by me too!

 

[MAAD DAWG]

The space travel in the game is exactly like it should be. It offers super fast in system travel and at the same time it lets you experience the enormity of the universe.

I couldn't agree more. FD has done a masterful job of conveying the enormity of space while at the same time compressing it into just a few minutes of real time with me sitting in my chair.

Another bloke described it as a "space sim". I think he got right. ED is a lot of things, but it is primarily a space sim.

 

[burzum]

ED tries to bring some realism to a space sim by reinforcing the vast distances involved in interstellar space travel. But even when they turn the pretend faster than light physics on, that still isn't fast enough for some. While some video games measure their progress in hours and minutes, ED's main areas of progress are measured in weeks, months and years.

Each time an ED fanboy walks out of his cave and comes up screaming "REALISM!" I can't stop laughing. ED is pure arcade, there is not much realism left. The most realism of the game was put into the procedural generation of the universe. Almost everything else is fiction and lacks the science.

And about the travel itself: A game mechanic like travel should either fun or avoided. Travel is not engaging the player in anything that is fun or interactive. Press button, wait, align, press button, wait... Rinse and repeat while reading news on the second screen... It's no fun at all to travel in ED, it's terrible boring and the reason I stopped first playing it in VR (because I couldn't do something interesting while travelling) and then finally deleted the game. At the current rate of progression they might finish the game in ~2026. All the "season" stuff should have been already in the base game and even more. FDEV is really awesome in selling tiny pieces of development as huge changes with a ton of bling-bling marketing speech. ED for me is in the state of terrible slow progression early access alpha phase and not a finished game that is extended.

 

[DefiledDragon]

In Elite, you aren't the Hero. The fate of the galaxy doesn't alter based on your actions. Heck, your actions aren't even a footnote in the recorded history of Elite.

You're a regular Joe. A very small cog in a galactically big (dark) wheel. Travelling between star systems trying to earn a few credits to better your ship, or buy a bigger, faster, whatever, one.

If you need to be the Hero. If you need your actions to make a significant difference to the game world or you need to "win"... perhaps Elite isn't the game for you.

Elite is a marathon, not a sprint. A journey, not a destination.

They should put that on the website, instead of all the misleading pap they have on there now.

 

[Tel Prydain]

Each time an ED fanboy walks out of his cave and comes up screaming "REALISM!" I can't stop laughing. ED is pure arcade, there is not much realism left. The most realism of the game was put into the procedural generation of the universe. Almost everything else is fiction and lacks the science.

Hence 'Space Sim' and not 'Spaceship sim'.