Veiled 'open only' reference?another FAS crossfire complaint?
Elite Dangerous Crowdfunding Support?
- Thread starter Commander Aldrin
- Start date
... Raider kit for the Imperial Courier! I agree!!!!111one!!
There comes a point in every project when you have to shoot the engineers and put the product into production.
---- Bob Lewis (Keep the Joint Running)
I, too, shall now discontinue going off-topic.
And yes, if you want to support Fronter, buy Arx. No one says you have to use them, just buy them. It will serve the same purpose.
Yes, it looks grubbling good.
Ah no no... I mean reagarding the ton of bug fixes still in the queue and never/too lately resolved, most annoying ones regarding instancing and game stability, lack of a decent C&P, leg-suit engineer flawed RNG / grinding, landable earthlikes (missing) to mention some.
Fear Factory for meDerail sorry...
...I would never have known of this speech if hadn't been for Linkin Park
Carry on wibbling everyone! o7
As best I remember, FDev used the initial crowd funding to get an indication of likely public interest in, and support for, a new Elite.
It's difficult to say whether or not this would work to enable justifying a significant Elite Dangerous expansion or evolution. I'd read buying arx as supporting the game 'as is', and so don't think that it sends the same signal. Whereas backing a new kick-starter would be expressing a firm indication of interest regarding a significant upgrade and enhancement.
On balance I don't think it's a bad idea and, if the outline of ED2 sounded sufficiently compelling, I'd back it for sure. I've certainly got full value for money from my backing pennies for ED, ymmv.
Besides, think of the fun we can have squabbling over what should be in the mk II product. It'd better damn well include hula girl and boy bobbleheads.......
It's difficult to say whether or not this would work to enable justifying a significant Elite Dangerous expansion or evolution. I'd read buying arx as supporting the game 'as is', and so don't think that it sends the same signal. Whereas backing a new kick-starter would be expressing a firm indication of interest regarding a significant upgrade and enhancement.
On balance I don't think it's a bad idea and, if the outline of ED2 sounded sufficiently compelling, I'd back it for sure. I've certainly got full value for money from my backing pennies for ED, ymmv.
Besides, think of the fun we can have squabbling over what should be in the mk II product. It'd better damn well include hula girl and boy bobbleheads.......
Yes - the problem is whose interest it indicates.
Say it's a relatively small expansion that just takes them a year of fast-paced development to make, and they manage to actually get it out on time and budget. That's perhaps £8M of development costs, so at £40/unit (let's also say it's something so impressive that despite it being smaller than Odyssey people are still willing to pay Odyssey-level prices for it) it needs to sell 200,000 of them (more because of costs of sales, less because it'll probably enable more ARX purchases, call it even as this is just back-of-envelope stuff).
Knowing that (be optimistic!) 20,000 super-fans are willing to pre-order it before development has even started says absolutely nothing about whether it'll get the other 180,000 sales from the far more numerous casual players: looking at what can be deduced from their investor presentations, Odyssey sold well over 150,000 copies in pre-sales and first-month purchases ... but it got nowhere near the hoped for 500,000 sales which it would have needed to give a strong return on investment (being unable to release it to the 25% of their player base on console obviously really didn't help there!)
What Frontier needs is not the super-fans to continue to be willing to throw money at them (appreciated as it is, I'm sure!) but probably an approximate doubling of active player numbers on PC.
(No, I don't have any ideas for how to achieve that. Frontier are trying probably the most plausible strategy from their end already.)
ngl, a similar thought went through my mind. However, I think these days the potential for a game to not be a smashing success at release but then find its groove later is a lot greater, Lethal Company comes to mind, though tangentially to the thread talking about streamers and Elite, it was Lethal Company being picked up by some major streamers that pushed it from a mediocre release to where it is now - which last time I looked was No 10 in the overal steam player chart.
Anyway, I think the idea that you may do better catering to an already installed and mostly engaged user base than trying to establish new ones isn't lost on those at Frontier at this point in time, I'd imagine.
Any idea on sales for Odyssey at this point?
To me the first years of ED including Beyond felt like a product of passion from Frontier. Odyssey feels like a product of work.
If that is still the case in Frontier, then I do NOT think they really know what strategy to follow. If you dont know what makes a good space game its hard to make it.
Indeed, so it will be for FDev to crunch the numbers, roll the dice and make their best guess. Much like they did the first time.
It's reasonable to suggest that EDO struggled because it simply wasn't very good upon release and, as you say, disenfranchised the console players. The Thargoid theme has likely pulled in (and exhausted) all the casual players that it was going to. The expansion that seemed to me to hit the sweet-spot was Horizons, which is why I think more landable/interactable planet types and more ships* would be a good starting point. (And bobble-heads, obviously!)
The one thing that seems certain is that doing nothing isn't going to rebuild the player base. The choices seem quite clear to me.
A model that has worked is that of NMS, although this is a very different company in a different situation, so I think their solution isn't viable for a publicly traded company.
Well, that's enough blah-blah, nowt we say here will likely change their thinking one jot.
* Just not like the Asp Scout or Cobra IV.... or T7.....
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Delacey brand hat, sweatshirt and t-shirt in the merch shop!
That and a Lavian Brandy poster.
Though having just reached Triple Elite I might treat myself to some early Xmas presents...
Buy me a second account if you want.
Nothing from any official releases that I've seen. For an ultra-crude proxy measure it seems to get about 1/8th the volume of Steam reviews as the base game ... so maybe high tens of thousands a year?
Horizons content is good now but it did take several years to get there too
- 2.0 Horizons was well received enough for the planet content itself ... but also generated the highest monthly negative Steam reviews the ED base game has ever had (considerably worse than the Odyssey release) because its initial pricing structure was incredibly confusing.
- 2.1 Engineers generated huge complaints and took three major fixes (2.1.05, 2.2.03 and 3.0) and a bunch more minor adjustments to get it to a more workable point
- 2.3 Multicrew was a near-unusable disaster at launch and was extremely flaky at least until the Odyssey release
- (2.2 Guardians and 2.4 Thargoids went pretty well)
- the entire Beyond season was done in direct response to players complaining that Horizons hadn't really addressed any of the weaknesses in the pre-Horizons content
Which does demonstrate their ability to fix things eventually, of course.
It's not far off the model for a lot of the Elite Dangerous improvements - release updates for free, make back the money in extra/continued sales of the existing product. (Banking a ridiculous amount of money upfront from the initial sales helps, of course!)
I thought Horizons was good right out of the box. Engineering I found/find to be a bit of a faff. ymmv.
I'm not sure I agree re your thoughts on the ED improvements. NMS releases large tranches of enjoyable and diverse, and brand new gameplay. ED broadly polishes and tweaks what's already there. I hate to get too comparative here, but I sense a joy from HG and a desire to make their game enjoyable fun to play. The impression I have long had with FDev is that various committees drain things dry, and I'd argue there's no feeling of an overarching vision. Nor passion.
For example: why no SRV racing tracks and tools to make such, complete with leader boards?
Quite early on some talented modders presented their fully working solution to FDev for 'approval' and were told to cease and desist. The idea was never heard of again. Pathetic IMHO.
Not for me ta. I really enjoyed working my way to a FAS, Python, and finally an Anaconda, but I'd really not want to do all work that twice!
Each to their own of course!