Odyssey will be the final nail in the coffin of ED.
I know in the past there have been the 'end of nigh' posts for ED, but I never believed them - but this time it's worse, much much worse.
Avg players (*):
May 2020: 6,800 after nothing new in the game for ages.
Jun 2020: 10,094 Fleet carriers added.
Jul 2020: 7,849
Apr 2021: 9,386 players getting ready for Odyssey / playing Alpha
May 2021: 10,957 Odyssey launch
Jun 2021: 7,523 less players than just after fleet carriers launched!!
Player count is continuing to drop.
Media Publicity:
The majority of streamers that mainly focus on ED have either stopped or switched games to keep their viewer numbers up.
Press and Steam reviews for Odyssey are negative, Steam:
RECENT REVIEWS: Mostly Negative (429)
ALL REVIEWS: Mostly Negative (5,173)
5 big Updates - almost a 1000 bug fixes - but the current state is still:
They promised a developer stream to talk about the future of the game.
No stream, no developer, no real news on the future of the game. Instead we got a forum post by a CM mainly about the next update that was about to drop and mention that some of the issues look to be more work than expected.
The Future - What we know so far:
No more VR development - no proper VR for OnFoot - despite VR once being a major selling point for ED, I only bought a VR headset to play ED!
No ship interiors : A core future promised by Mr Braben many times and one of the single most requested features of the player base.
Last post on the future hinted that Console release might take more work than expected ( maybe the Autumn release will slip to Winter or 2022?), meanwhile PC players can expect nothing until Frontier manage to dumb the graphics down enough to be playable no tech from 2013 - when currently they can't even make it work on tech from 2021.
Prediction:
How can ED be financially viable for this financial year ? Who would buy or spend money on this game in it's current state ?
Investors looking at the reviews and dropping player counts and media coverage ( all the - "I'm leaving Elite because ..." videos ) will see no reason to continue investing in ED.
ED will go into 'life support' only mode next year.
I predict, that failing a major turn around in the policy of management, Elite Dangerous will die and servers will be shutdown before Star Citizen's full release - sometime before 2025.
It's so sad when a developer loses interest in a game before the players do - the lack real, working new content, the clinging to the idea that players just wanted more grind just to get better tech that actually only makes it a bit easier to grind more, the failed idea they adding first person shooter features would help sell the game to the instant gratification players of Fortnight ( given the travel times and single round, single mode, single location type then more travel time - instant is not the word for it! ). Frontier management have demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of what the players actually wanted and what the now, very dated Cobra engine, can actually deliver.
* Source: https://steamcharts.com/app/359320#6m ( yes lots of people don't use steam, I have 3 accounts and only one is steam linked - but it's the only figures that are public ).
I know in the past there have been the 'end of nigh' posts for ED, but I never believed them - but this time it's worse, much much worse.
Avg players (*):
May 2020: 6,800 after nothing new in the game for ages.
Jun 2020: 10,094 Fleet carriers added.
Jul 2020: 7,849
Apr 2021: 9,386 players getting ready for Odyssey / playing Alpha
May 2021: 10,957 Odyssey launch
Jun 2021: 7,523 less players than just after fleet carriers launched!!
Player count is continuing to drop.
Media Publicity:
The majority of streamers that mainly focus on ED have either stopped or switched games to keep their viewer numbers up.
Press and Steam reviews for Odyssey are negative, Steam:
RECENT REVIEWS: Mostly Negative (429)
ALL REVIEWS: Mostly Negative (5,173)
5 big Updates - almost a 1000 bug fixes - but the current state is still:
- broken renderer giving terrible frame rates for a large percentage of players ( making the game almost unplayable )
- broken planet tech killing exploration because of the ruined planets with repeated and tiled hand made assets replacing the previous procedural tech.
- broken networking - Elite's networking has always been bad and Frontier live by the manta that it's good enough - It's not!!
- More bugs - just look at the forum for people complaining about various missions not working
They promised a developer stream to talk about the future of the game.
No stream, no developer, no real news on the future of the game. Instead we got a forum post by a CM mainly about the next update that was about to drop and mention that some of the issues look to be more work than expected.
The Future - What we know so far:
No more VR development - no proper VR for OnFoot - despite VR once being a major selling point for ED, I only bought a VR headset to play ED!
No ship interiors : A core future promised by Mr Braben many times and one of the single most requested features of the player base.
Last post on the future hinted that Console release might take more work than expected ( maybe the Autumn release will slip to Winter or 2022?), meanwhile PC players can expect nothing until Frontier manage to dumb the graphics down enough to be playable no tech from 2013 - when currently they can't even make it work on tech from 2021.
Prediction:
How can ED be financially viable for this financial year ? Who would buy or spend money on this game in it's current state ?
Investors looking at the reviews and dropping player counts and media coverage ( all the - "I'm leaving Elite because ..." videos ) will see no reason to continue investing in ED.
ED will go into 'life support' only mode next year.
I predict, that failing a major turn around in the policy of management, Elite Dangerous will die and servers will be shutdown before Star Citizen's full release - sometime before 2025.
It's so sad when a developer loses interest in a game before the players do - the lack real, working new content, the clinging to the idea that players just wanted more grind just to get better tech that actually only makes it a bit easier to grind more, the failed idea they adding first person shooter features would help sell the game to the instant gratification players of Fortnight ( given the travel times and single round, single mode, single location type then more travel time - instant is not the word for it! ). Frontier management have demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of what the players actually wanted and what the now, very dated Cobra engine, can actually deliver.
* Source: https://steamcharts.com/app/359320#6m ( yes lots of people don't use steam, I have 3 accounts and only one is steam linked - but it's the only figures that are public ).