"Elite Dangerous is dying"

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StanleyDunkan

S
anthonycsheehy said:
You forget one thing - Elite is David Braben's baby! No other game really has his heart behind it like this. The reason we are here, with Odyssey IS because of that heart. Otherwise economic sensibilities would forced FDev not have taken the risks it did.

Until Braben dies (long may he live) neither will Elite truly die!
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And that is the problem, because Elite needs to change if it wan't to be competetive with NMS and SC.
Their biggest problem is the way the release content. They want to go big, massive to blow peoples mind - but it brings lots of bugs, delays and prolongs the development.

They need to go smaller, adapt Stellaris model - Each patch has some Payed and Free content. They roll out patches, but they also earn money doing so. With more money they can add more developers or go for Elite Dangerous 2. Because at this rate, there will never be Elite Dangerous 2, cause they simple don't earn enough money on the titel to continue.


I hope the failure of Oddysey, will teach them not to release such expensive, time consuming and big DLC's - 3 years down the drain. And now they need to spend another 6 month just fixing it. It's a nightmare...
 

CMDR Sheehy

CMDR Sheehy
StanleyDunkan said:
And that is the problem, because Elite needs to change if it wan't to be competetive with NMS and SC.
Their biggest problem is the way the release content. They want to go big, massive to blow peoples mind - but it brings lots of bugs, delays and prolongs the development.

They need to go smaller, adapt Stellaris model - Each patch has some Payed and Free content. They roll out patches, but they also earn money doing so. With more money they can add more developers or go for Elite Dangerous 2. Because at this rate, there will never be Elite Dangerous 2, cause they simple don't earn enough money on the titel to continue.


I hope the failure of Oddysey, will teach them not to release such expensive, time consuming and big DLC's - 3 years down the drain. And now they need to spend another 6 month just fixing it. It's a nightmare...
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Well, sticking to the topic, and agreeing with the OP, and making the additional point that ED has never been in competition with NMS nor the train wreck (Braben and Roberts are friends), none of this means that ED is dying - it means it's being developed out of love, not out for making money. So all these false assumptions on how to force FDev to do the things the community wants is way off target: i.e. Elite is nowhere near dying.
 

CMDR SJ

C
StanleyDunkan said:
And that is the problem, because Elite needs to change if it wan't to be competetive with NMS and SC.
Their biggest problem is the way the release content. They want to go big, massive to blow peoples mind - but it brings lots of bugs, delays and prolongs the development.

They need to go smaller, adapt Stellaris model - Each patch has some Payed and Free content. They roll out patches, but they also earn money doing so. With more money they can add more developers or go for Elite Dangerous 2. Because at this rate, there will never be Elite Dangerous 2, cause they simple don't earn enough money on the titel to continue.


I hope the failure of Oddysey, will teach them not to release such expensive, time consuming and big DLC's - 3 years down the drain. And now they need to spend another 6 month just fixing it. It's a nightmare...
Click to expand...
I have to disagree with you on the going big part, the issue is they do not do enough quality testing before releasing. They set a specific schedule and then expected to cram a lot into that time.

Some features will simply take time and cannot be phased in, others make sense in combination with each other. But as long as it gets tested both internally and externally there shouldn't be a problem.

What i think you maybe meant to say, is they dream and hype big things up in the community. Interiors, flying in gas giants etc, but then we dont see or hear anything.
 

StanleyDunkan

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anthonycsheehy said:
Well, sticking to the topic, and agreeing with the OP, and making the additional point that ED has never been in competition with NMS nor the train wreck (Braben and Roberts are friends), none of this means that ED is dying - it means it's being developed out of love, not out for making money. So all these false assumptions on how to force FDev to do the things the community wants is way off target: i.e. Elite is nowhere near dying.
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If love can pay salary to 100 developers each month - then things would have been so much simpler.

With the right model, they could have expanded their Development team that works on Elite to 300-400 people over the course of 6 years. They had the advantage of beeing Unique on the block. Now neighbours are starting to shine, attracting customers.
 

StanleyDunkan

S
CMDR TheDanzor said:
I have to disagree with you on the going big part, the issue is they do not do enough quality testing before releasing. They set a specific schedule and then expected to cram a lot into that time.

Some features will simply take time and cannot be phased in, others make sense in combination with each other. But as long as it gets tested both internally and externally there shouldn't be a problem.

What i think you maybe meant to say, is they dream and hype big things up in the community. Interiors, flying in gas giants etc, but then we dont see or hear anything.
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We are 3 month in to "testing " Odyssey - and main perfomance issues have not been adressed yet. It's not testing,but the project was just to big, and they overshot their development timeline by almost year. And that is a massive amount, considering it was supposed to be just 2 or 3 years of development.
 

CMDR Sheehy

CMDR Sheehy
StanleyDunkan said:
If love can pay salary to 100 developers each month - then things would have been so much simpler.

With the right model, they could have expanded their Development team that works on Elite to 300-400 people over the course of 6 years. They had the advantage of beeing Unique on the block. Now neighbours are starting to shine, attracting customers.
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Well love for Elite paid off with the kickstarter - and with every vanity project there are other things that keep the books in the black.

Starting to shine? Some stuff shines because it is slick and brown - does not mean it's Elite and doesn't mean it will compete - except for those who really don't care about Elite - the core that will stick with it no matter what because - NMS is not Elite - it's barely a space sim, Space Simulator is not Elite - it's pretty - but it's not Elite. SC... well, we mentioned poo before so we will move on - Space Engineers is not Elite... the upcoming releases... Meh. None of them are based on a wireframe running on 1k game that gave us the idea that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

When that generation goes to the gaming space in the sky - then Elite can die, because the rest of you have no idea what's valuable and you can do NMS and whatever piques your fancy. Go on with ya...
 

CMDR SJ

C
StanleyDunkan said:
We are 3 month in to "testing " Odyssey - and main perfomance issues have not been adressed yet. It's not testing,but the project was just to big, and they overshot their development timeline by almost year. And that is a massive amount, considering it was supposed to be just 2 or 3 years of development.
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In software we have what we like to call the "2x factor", which means whenever a developer gives an estimate you take it and times it by 2 at the very least. Things taking longer in software development is literally now an every day thing.
The issue usually lies in how well are things being tested internally, branched and structured internally, automatic testing practises etc, and then externally testing, if you see the development is taking longer then you should account of testing also taking longer. Which they did not.

Additionally when you see the alpha, we were on an older branch. from a QA perspective that is an absolutely terrible idea. In software development we have design patterns such as "feature flags" to ensure we do not over-expose the features we want.
But at the very least the foundation of the game should of been in the alpha. This includes the planetary tech, settlements and more. If they want to hide some of the variety then we look at the feature flag system.
What this would of shown to the community is that the game simply wasn't ready.
The last stage of the alpha should of contained the more up-to-date planetary tech and updated branch.

But as said, they decided to stick to their release schedule and pray not enough broke on the day.

Any developer on this forum will know how true this situation is, we have a deadline we must meet and must spent a lot of extra time to make it.
But it'll usually go south and require time straight after to do cleanup.

But this shouldn't be an excuse, if they delayed it frontiers would have gotten a lot less backlash externally. Instead they literally did a cyberpunk to themselves.
 
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CMDR SJ

C
anthonycsheehy said:
Well love for Elite paid off with the kickstarter - and with every vanity project there are other things that keep the books in the black.

Starting to shine? Some stuff shines because it is slick and brown - does not mean it's Elite and doesn't mean it will compete - except for those who really don't care about Elite - the core that will stick with it no matter what because - NMS is not Elite - it's barely a space sim, Space Simulator is not Elite - it's pretty - but it's not Elite. SC... well, we mentioned poo before so we will move on - Space Engineers is not Elite... the upcoming releases... Meh. None of them are based on a wireframe running on 1k game that gave us the idea that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

When that generation goes to the gaming space in the sky - then Elite can die, because the rest of you have no idea what's valuable and you can do NMS and whatever piques your fancy. Go on with ya...
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Sorry but that is not an argument.... What we are seeing, is the start of some core members of the community, core initiatives by the community etc, are starting to fade. They are starting to see the experiences they can have in NMS, SC, X4, etc and dream of having them in elite.

Take a step back and see the bigger picture, elite is starting to no longer be the elite the community fell in love with. Some core locations got completely ruined in odyssey for example and some core community members are not liking the way Frontiers handled things.

But as i said before, this could just mean that a new community is born from odyssey +, it could be the old community fades and new one begins. This happens in MMOs all the time. The title of this thread is more: the elite we came to love, is dying.
 

StanleyDunkan

S
anthonycsheehy said:
Well love for Elite paid off with the kickstarter - and with every vanity project there are other things that keep the books in the black.

Starting to shine? Some stuff shines because it is slick and brown - does not mean it's Elite and doesn't mean it will compete - except for those who really don't care about Elite - the core that will stick with it no matter what because - NMS is not Elite - it's barely a space sim, Space Simulator is not Elite - it's pretty - but it's not Elite. SC... well, we mentioned poo before so we will move on - Space Engineers is not Elite... the upcoming releases... Meh. None of them are based on a wireframe running on 1k game that gave us the idea that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!

When that generation goes to the gaming space in the sky - then Elite can die, because the rest of you have no idea what's valuable and you can do NMS and whatever piques your fancy. Go on with ya...
Click to expand...
You have a game with 1:1 galaxy, and exploration at a poorer level than in the game like NMS.
They release a DLC with the name " Odyssey " - but all it brougt was broken pefromance and a bit of pew pew on the ground.
You can go to CMDR Will and Kate youtube channel, and she will show you what real Mining in Space looks like in Space games.

Yea, other games begin to outshine Elite, because it's no longer a Unique Space Sim on the market. And the recent exodus of players and Tubers have confirmed that.

If Elite want's to go further it needs to change. The old model is not going to work, and Odyssey is a living proof of that.
 

CMDR Fnool

CMDR Fnool
My own personal guess is that Elite Dangerous is 'ill with a decent chance of recovery'. There are ominous signs, such as the depressed tone and pessimistic video titles of prominent ED Youtubers who have been very optimistic in the past, i won't name them but they are well known, and there are also good signs in that despite not much communication, Frontier do seem to be acknowledging the issues present.

I know i was bound to say this because as an explorer i am biased, but if Frontier don't manage to bring back uniquely randomised planet topographies as they had in Horizons, (a valued feature even by those who only dabble with exploration), then the game won't recover a minority but nonetheless significant part of its player base. My personal guess is, ED will be in better health by the time they release the console version, and it won't die, it may even return to its previously rosy condition, but Odyssey is going to be remembered much like a brush with Covid, a nasty experience that could have been fatal.
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
anthonycsheehy said:
You forget one thing - Elite is David Braben's baby! No other game really has his heart behind it like this. The reason we are here, with Odyssey IS because of that heart. Otherwise economic sensibilities would forced FDev not have taken the risks it did.

Until Braben dies (long may he live) neither will Elite truly die!
Click to expand...
Unless he only leased the IP to FD it will stick with the company, not with the individual.
 

MishaTX

MishaTX
I'm getting flashbacks here. To the days when Fidel was dying/had died every single day for years.

Let's just make sure the corpse is done twitching before we send it to the friends over in forensics, m'kay?
 

[VR] James Constantine

[VR] James Constantine
StanleyDunkan said:
If love can pay salary to 100 developers each month - then things would have been so much simpler.

With the right model, they could have expanded their Development team that works on Elite to 300-400 people over the course of 6 years. They had the advantage of beeing Unique on the block. Now neighbours are starting to shine, attracting customers.
Click to expand...
TBH, I don't believe they had 100 developers working for - what was it - two or three years on EDO. I suspect the number was much lower, kept on having resources sequestered for other projects and was composed of principally graduate recruits. Most graduates need an inordinate amount of hand holding for the first year, to the point that they're not productive, after which you finally start seeing ROI. Unless you have a high employee churn rate...

Anyway, even if true, throwing resources doesn't solve bottlenecks in development, if anything it makes things less manageable. In the end nine women can't have a baby in one month.

Finally, there was clearly little or no QA done, but the number of bugs I saw in the day zero release was such that it looked like the developers didn't bother with basic unit tests either.

I can see Odyssey becoming a case study in business schools.
 

PRORABBIT67

PRORABBIT67
I disagree.
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Ohanka

O
You know what is amazing? How much the exploration is used in marketing for the game. They always mention the 1:1 scale of the galaxy. Even the titles of the expansions evoke images of exploration (horizons, beyond and odyssey). Yet there is very little gameplay for explorers beyond scanning planets and plants, and not a whole lot to really find out in the black. The whole thing boils down to taking pretty pictures;

It probably wouldn’t hurt for FDEV to focus on this aspect of the game more.
 
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