Devs don't play their own game...

[Karunamon]

I can confirm that a whole bunch of us Devs do play Elite Dangerous on the public servers in open during our spare time.

Thanks for clarifying - guess whatever I was thinking of from that stream video was bogus.

 

[Tiamat]

This doesn't bring me any hope that things will be made better if this is your answer.

Soooo much wrong in this post.

"lead games designer doesn't play all the ways, just a few different ways." Flies under the radar so they don't participate in open play CGs or see what happens with PP. Doesn't see how broken it is the ability to have thousands of players affect the BGS without ever having to run into someone who might want to stop them.

In his spare time. He can't be expected to play 24 hours a day so in his spare time he plays the way he wants which he flat-out says.

Until then your player counts are going to remain low, and you will lose a lot of players when SC comes out. And so far you haven't been able to retain a healthy enough population to make your game actually look populated in open even when instancing isn't broken (Cept it is broken 95% of the time).

Player counts are actually quite healthy but given the size of the universe and many play solo or in private groups you don't see as many as you expect. Try any of the hotspots such as Eravate, CG locations or the ruins and you will see plenty. SC is unlikely to steal too many players as only the fatally loyal fanbois refuse to accept that SC in its current state is nothing more than a collection of tech demos and when it finally gets released it will be horribly outdated. SC is Daikatana for the modern age.

You as a lead designer should already understand the mechanics your team put in to begin with. You should understand that running a python is going to get you killed. You should understand that trying to do anything in open with an un-engineered ship is suicidal. So many things you should understand yet are not on display for us to see.

Of course they understand their mechanics, they wrote them. Running any ship without the skills to do so will get you killed. Done too much Sothis by any chance? An engineered ships with a poor CMDR at the helm is probably going to lose to an un-engineered ship with a skilled CMDR flying it.