Why would they lie about numbers? Particularly in a document that has to be factually accurate? (I assume you understand why?)
Are Frontier content with Elite Dangerous? a few questions
- Thread starter Muzz UK
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Possibly they are doing major reconstruction on the Odyssey variant of COBRA to get performance 'where it should be'? We were told that 'significant improvements' were to be expected in Update 8, now that has changed to 'maybe 9' - which may indicate that they have yet to 'complete' the work.
I'm in the middle regarding the progress of ED, i'm between 'meh' and 'hmm'.
Even if we take the approach that ED simply need to balance Profit / Sustainability and set everything aside for a second. If they took a gamble and beefed up their team and worked on other features to get out much more, than it could turn the ship (pardon the pun) in a much more profitable direction. Look at the mess star citizen is in & the scandals, yet the wheels keeping turning and they are making at least 4-5 mil a month (in 2020). Why? Because people are excited about the future of it and elements of it are admittedly impressive.
Nobody wants a shiny ball of useless of course. But if ED take the risk, invest more in themselves and get players more excited about up and coming features they can recoup lost players, bring in a lot of new players and triple their profits. This year alone SC is releasing at least 8-9 ships, numerous features and the excitement is pretty big from their player base. Even if ED said 'hey guys, this is what we are planning in the long run', even if it was much less, at least we would not what to expect and more people would continue to play.
SC have a great yearly roadmap, every features progress has a tab that goes into crazy detail, I could nearly tell you when they take their lunch lol ED need's to push towards something like this IMO.
Even if we take the approach that ED simply need to balance Profit / Sustainability and set everything aside for a second. If they took a gamble and beefed up their team and worked on other features to get out much more, than it could turn the ship (pardon the pun) in a much more profitable direction. Look at the mess star citizen is in & the scandals, yet the wheels keeping turning and they are making at least 4-5 mil a month (in 2020). Why? Because people are excited about the future of it and elements of it are admittedly impressive.
Nobody wants a shiny ball of useless of course. But if ED take the risk, invest more in themselves and get players more excited about up and coming features they can recoup lost players, bring in a lot of new players and triple their profits. This year alone SC is releasing at least 8-9 ships, numerous features and the excitement is pretty big from their player base. Even if ED said 'hey guys, this is what we are planning in the long run', even if it was much less, at least we would not what to expect and more people would continue to play.
SC have a great yearly roadmap, every features progress has a tab that goes into crazy detail, I could nearly tell you when they take their lunch lol ED need's to push towards something like this IMO.
I think that's part of the rework process actually.
Don't know about you but I get an occasional bug (usually when calling a taxi) where the surface goes like glass and you can half see through it .. you can see the tiling that makes up the surface texture. Prior to patch 7 those were circular, now they're more oblong. So they've changed the rendering method in patch 7, I think in preparation for optimisation patch 8. One consolidation step back before the step forward, if you see what I mean. Although I can't explain why oblong tiles would be better, that's what it looks like to me anyway.
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Even using simple extrapolation - if players spend 2 hours in the game then than 3600/hr will be 43k players per day - and for PC there are three launchers, so multiply by 3 again and you get 129k players. And that's assuming the same players are playing the same 2 hours every day, so you should probably multiply up by another factor. Certainly not an unbelievable figure
Maybe - who knows? fdev have been completely silent on the whole thing. People will always retcon reasons for things, it would be neat if fdev were in front of things. Like if they'd given a heads-up about the P7 slowdowns then it would be legit to say 'oh yes, part of a plan'. At the moment they still haven't even admitted they changed anything that would cause those slowdown, or that there was a slowdown.
Even using simple extrapolation - if players spend 2 hours in the game then than 3600/hr will be 43k players per day - and for PC there are three launchers, so multiply by 3 again and you get 129k players. And that's assuming the same players are playing the same 2 hours every day, so you should probably multiply up by another factor. Certainly not an unbelievable figure
Yeah, I wonder why
What storm was that exactly? They said long before the release that there would not be ship interiors coming with Odyssey, so if there was a storm then it was purely of artificially generated outrage. I personally saw no storm!
And yet the top 20 bug list has never seen Performance at no 1. Just shows that asking the community for input is bonkers.
What you are suggesting is illegal and will get the board of directors fined or more likely in jail.
So take your b.s and fud somewhere else
Deleted member 182079
D
I had a casual scan through the report, and it seems pretty clear to me where their focus lies these days (it sure isn't Elite, somewhat understandable given its age). It's also a shame that they don't publish revenues by IP, I would've found that very interesting particularly data since June.TLDR: Though the Odyssey start was disappointing from their perspective too, they stick to it and hope it will attract users again after refinements. Or that's what I get from their Annual Report they released some time ago. Financially, they're going strong and apparently had a record year, with the numbers of employees rising to 680+, recruiting 200 new staff during Corona times it seems.
It's an interesting read, with statements from Braben and others. On the Odyssey launch, Braben said this (p. 09):
"FY21 saw the announcement (in June 2020) and release (in May 2021) of
Elite Dangerous: Odyssey on PC, our most ambitious development project
to date: the addition of first-person on-foot gameplay into our 1:1 galactic
simulation of the whole Milky Way. This meant bringing the human scale
to a galaxy nearly 100,000 light years across. Completing this large and
complex expansion without the benefits of face-to-face collaboration was
challenging, and despite a successful alpha period, unfortunately the
launch was hindered by connectivity issues, and this turned the positive
reception of the alpha to one of negativity. Despite its initial challenges,
hundreds of thousands of players are enjoying the experience. I am
delighted with the underlying achievement by our team, and remain
confident that more and more players will upgrade to Odyssey over time
as we continue to refine the experience."
and on p. 11
"Our existing game franchise portfolio continues to perform well.
Engagement with our Elite Dangerous player community
is gradually improving, and we remain confident that more
and more players will upgrade to Odyssey over time as we
continue to improve and refine the experience."
On p. 38, Alex Bevis (CFO) comments the launch as follows:
"In May 2021 we released our most ambitious expansion to date for Elite
Dangerous, Elite Dangerous: Odyssey, which generated
launch revenues on PC in that month. The overall reception
to this major content update has been disappointing, but we
are confident that as we improve and enhance the Odyssey
experience we will see more and more Commanders
engaging with the expansion."
So, the game is not dead yet and will not be in the forseeable future. Which I'm rather glad about
O7,
What struck me particularly was the strategic report for Elite, and the specific focus on cosmetics in particular. No mention at all of future new content (paid or free). I'll give them the benefit of the doubt given it's perhaps too early since EDO only released a few months ago, but still... it is a strategic report after all. Pipeline looks a bit meagre.
Dat "connectivity issues" section though... I may have pulled both of my eyebrow muscles when reading that. I guess the target audience doesn't care for the actual state of the game as long as it sells - details of which we don't really know much about since they don't share this as I mentioned above. Oh well.
They were talking about the problems with players connection the first few days after launch. Which was indeed to be expected. You are also right that the target audience does not care for Elite or Jurassic park for that matter. They invest in the company. That the number per game are not disclosed is also very normal. For instance Apple has never (Or I missed it recently) disclosed how many Iphones they sold.
Are they content with Elite Dangerous?
No probably not.
No probably not.
Deleted member 182079
D
I don't think they'd lie, but given how .... selective they've been with the truth when it comes to the reasons for the poor reception (and it's not like it's been a major issue since the first few days after launch, and around patch day, yet reception still hasn't turned into one that's overall positive) they may have applied similar liberties here.
Or they could've just based that on sales figures for all we know - and I very much doubt that auditors will even glance at that part of the report because a lot is just PR bluster and not within their remit I'd say. Though what Factabulous suggested would also make sense to be fair.
Deleted member 182079
D
Absolutely, and they completely omitted the fact the game received 7 (6 probably at the time of the report, I lost track) mostly poor major updates plus various hotfixes, and isn't really in a much better place since release in the greater scheme of things, in terms of performance, general bugs and content (the latter is of course my own personal view, the other two are more objective observations). While player numbers seem to have dropped since and are (as far as I'm aware) not recovering to pre-launch levels either (Steam is the only yardstick unfortunately but in lieu of nothing else and the platform's size still reasonable to extrapolate from that).
I understand that sales by product isn't often published, I was just secretly hoping they would though as I'd find the trend extremely interesting. I guess the only way to find out would be to apply for a finance job at FDev Towers
I'm going to start a campaign to have emotes in open play only.
Indeed. Something that also struck me was the following passage from Accounting Policies (p. 73) where it reads
"Internally generated intangible assets, consisting of direct labour costs, other specific direct project costs and directly attributable project support
costs, are amortised on a straight line basis over their useful economic lives. The estimated useful lives of current development projects are between
three and five years. When a self-published game is intended for release on multiple platforms without material content change, amortisation is based
on the length of time in which that game is expected to be supported in an unchanged format. Acquired rights are assessed for their useful ‘franchise
life’. For Elite Dangerous this is prudently estimated at eight years; within the sector successful franchises normally have useful lives of over ten years."
Whatever that may mean actually, might have an accountancy background. I think that at the current stage, they won't invest anything on future extensions, as Odyssey must be a financial failure in its current state and there's no room for planning such things while the general future and the question whether the current situation can be turned around are more or less uncertain. On p. 14, their future plan timeline lists EDO to be in the portfolio beyond FY 2025 at least.
O7,
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I'd say that's a little unfair, they've not been ignoring the FPS issues. When I compare my fps from update 7 to the initial release, it's vastly improved. For most On-foot functions (with the exception of exploration) I was getting between 7-10 fps, dependant on activity. Update 7 got that average up to 35-45 fps (with the exceptions being the Planetary port bar and some large mining settlements). Update 6 is where the framerate improved where rest of the game started work properly for me (Anything over 30+ is fine for me and I'd been scanning plants for most of the time up till then).
The main issue for me is the framerate drops, like in update 7 where the game seems to freeze for about 5 seconds after you drop into a CZ. I am on Low settings using a GTX 1050 Ti, which isn't too bad. It's where the GTX 20 and 30 series are having lower frame rates than me do you have to worry.
So, no, you don't understand why. No problem.
