Actually, it looks like I failed to remove that “a” in there, and I didn’t think the equal sign was necessary, but none the less, I edited the equation accordingly.
Elite Dangerous plans for 2024
- Thread starter Arubeto
- Start date
Actually, it looks like I failed to remove that “a” in there, and I didn’t think the equal sign was necessary, but none the less, I edited the equation accordingly.
If you don't set it up right and do a band-aid conversion you might see the odd rounding error pop up and cause bizarre effects.
Darkfyre has achievement unlocked: al-JabrActually, it looks like I failed to remove that “a” in there, and I didn’t think the equal sign was necessary, but none the less, I edited the equation accordingly.
Sure, if I could get an upgrade for £300, and say I did that at the start, it'd only take me...another two years to break even. I can also cancel it should I stop playing ED sometime before then. Furthermore, I don't play any other pc games that require anything close to Odyssey requirements. And, also if you can find me a new laptop for £300 that'd be very impressive.
I only list the above so you can better understand my decision, but also my personal circumstances really don't relate too much to the question of if a subscription would be justified. That was just an example of what I would personally think worth a subscription, as the absolute lowest bar since it'd be no worse than the current situation. Well, at least Geforce would let me stream other games if I had any worth streaming.
Also, a subscription model would probably be disastrous for Elite. Currently you pay upfront, like the majority of games, so Frontier make money from drawing in new customers, regardless of if they stick around. A subscription would flip that around to focus on long-term player retention, and judging from old console achievements, a huge chunk of players never make it past a Sidewinder.
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I'm fine with noobs coming and going as long as they subsidize my game...
If I'm understanding what you mean cozy correctly, I don't know that coziness has to be the be all and end all, and I don't see how making, at the low end of the scale, a captain's/living quarters that one could decorate etc.. would be antithetical to the game. Though we all deserve a little coziness in the game, no?
The framework for it is there with synthesis already, though there would be a decent amount of work to expand it fully, though again, a lot of the materials, data & commodities are already present and a lot of the process then would be to work out the crafting recipes from what's already in the game, possibly adding extra materials/commodities as needed. I would advocate checking out Empyrion as a good example of how to work it out in the context of a sci-fi/space game. I'm not suggesting going full on Minecraft with it but being able to build some modular prefabricated buildings etc. from scratch from materials -> commodities -> manufacturing would be worthwhile, especially if these had some specialty purpose like surface mining, trading post etc..
I don't know if that would be a factor any more than if fully atmospheric planets were added. I'd imagine that just adding stuff to the game is going to add to the processing/memory overhead, especially if they're as detailed as some want to see, ie; volumetric clouds etc..
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Elite's design is sometimes deliberately hostile to the player to get that sim feel other times it just pretends to have a more dangerous bite than it actually does. Building a base in survival games is actively fighting against the hostility of the world itself where in Elite it's more systematic which a shelter won't give you reprieve from unless it has more practical, mechanical value (like a FC). Usually that takes away from things that could be purely cosmetic spaces in games just due to the function over form perceptions players will have.
Yeah that's exactly what I had in mind when said it would turn out like the FC interior stuff, a bit lifeless - the modular building stuff with Elite's aesthetics turns out quite deliberately sterile and doesn't allow much room for creativity. There's a lot to making architecture interesting and pleasing and Odyssey interiors miss all of it - bland to the point where it would actually be quite a great move to suddenly say: "Yeah the concourse is where the NOOB CMDRs initially go, the real Elite know about the cool bar at Lunarville 7 down at airlock 3 and hang out with the spacewitch called eternity." and have a real bar with actual interior design instead of some corporate mall , but that will only exist in our imaginations.
There's a lot of mileage to be gotten from juxtaposition. Maybe things might feel more dangerous if one had some cozy spot they need to protect or survive to get to.
The concourses are fine, I'd say the industrial design reflects airport lounges pretty well, which is basically what they function as. But I 100% agree that in some other systems maybe there could be something more 'cool'.
Yeah but by using that design they're kinda liminal spaces and not cool places to hang out in which is what players actually wanted from them in hindsight and what similar social spaces in other games try to be. Not sure if this is falls under hostile design intentionally or unintentionally and if it serves the purpose of getting players to go out and do stuff instead of loitering in the concourse (the worst crime).
Sounds like a captain's lounge or giving the player a way to create their own cozy and/or cool space might be a good solution to that problem, eh?
It's very divisive and most instances of it these days are for cosmetics and stuff like that rather than basic access to the game. Even then, the FOMO aspect of it can be offputting.
In relation to that though I have thought about having a free "open" tier of Elite (a kind of Provisional Federations Pilot's License) that is limited to one or two systems with limited access to only the basic ships (Cobra Mk III, Viper Mk III, Eagle, Sidewinder, Hauler, Dolphin) and modules, no engineering, comes with CQC and is open only. It would act as a trial area, something like how old school Runescape works, that allows a zero cost entry to the game, but offers plenty of cosmetics to help pay for the server costs and the ability to earn Arx at a reduced rate. All credits earned in game would carry over when someone buys their full Pilot's License. This idea was before Odyssey came out, but I think it could also work for that as well - at this point I think it might be a good idea to simplify the base/Odyssey combo and settle on an inbetween full/sale price for Elite/Odyssey for a single purchase option at something like $39.99. Adding some social options would be cool too, especially with onfoot - not suggesting basebuilding, but maybe a small personal space on a station using Odyssey features to implement that along with more cosmetics. The goal would be to make it something that anyone could try and for those who enjoy it, I would be reasonably confident that a good portion of them would then upgrade to the full game. The hope would be that the open area would be self funding via cosmetics and bring in new players which of course would then bring in development revenue for the rest of the game.
OK that does make sense and I'd also think about GN in those circumstances, but as you say they are pretty extreme. I guess the message there is subscriptions are great for small addressable markets if you can find the right niches. Which ain't Frontier, I agree.
(I would make the point you probably could find a refurb laptop for £300 that was good enough for 30fps, so that is still a "something is better than nothing" solution.)
Yep, totally with you now.
That is an excellent point. I have an iRacing subscription because sim racing is a lonnnnng play and there are enough other sim racers around it's worth paying out for someone to organise things so we can race. I can sort of see how an ED squadron could be something like a racing league but there would need to be a proper framework for it from either FDev or a third party, and customers who come into it with that very committed mindset. The irony here is that there IS a community for this space sim that really are this committed to a space sim but there's really nothing for them to glom onto, and FDev taking player factions away actually made that worse.
I think that last thought about an audience for the sim element of it is what keeps making me think there must be a way to make subs work. Look at stuff like the Cannonball Runs. SURELY there's some way to monetise that. Although I say that and then I look at the difference between casual sim racing versus the slow meltdown that esports is going through and I think... yeah, maybe we don't need to involve money here.
This is a great point and it's probably why iRacing do their three-months-for-the-price-of-one thing. They must pick up loads of "I'll try it once" users from that.
So the plans for 2024 for FDev are explicit in here. It doesn't mention ED anywhere - that's lumped in with "back catalogue" and then most "back catalogue" games are called out somewhere with some angle or another, except for ED.
- '24, '25, and '26 will see one new "creative management simulation" game each. The game for 2025 is specifically called out in the CEO's quote and it's "own-IP" so I guess that means it's an idea from scratch, not a licence deal of some sort.
- Warhammer 40k release for console has been announced already.
- There will be another one of the successful PC games ported to console, to be announced "in the next few weeks."
They also call out that the results are not quite as bad as they look because it includes a specific write-off of the binfire with Realms and also that they spent cash on F1 rather than treating it as an asset; and they're now recognising R&D cost more quickly rather than spreading it over years and years.
So they have a restructured studio; they are using that to build CMS; they have a from-whole-cloth CMS coming in 2025, so there's your investment and your new piece to keep devs interested.
[ I'd have to go back and read the 2023 report to figure out why they've done that but I'd guess it's because they find R&D output has gone stale by the time they've finished paying for it, and so they have to keep starting again, under the current model, so it's effectively hiding a problem which is a) bad b) naughty ]
The investor call with the CEO is happening now so perhaps we'll get more in the press later today.
I'm not going to comment... I think you can take that as my comment.
I think it says CMS are 55% of revenue - and back catalogue is 72% of revenue. So ED is more like 17% of revenue (so that's 8M in the half year, 16M/year then). And that's assuming no other back catalogue so it will be lower. And IANAA.
The fact they don't mention Elite by name is telling - no DLC incoming so all those ELW / Ship Interiors / Asteroid Fields / Tourist Beacon DLC are not getting any closer
Pretty much as expected, unfortunately. I don't think there's any big development for Elite in the budget.
Last time a lot of people believed (or hoped) that continuing support and development for the existing portfolio means things will be fine for Elite, but this again doubles down on talking about CMS specifically. Literally the only time Elite is mentioned in this report is "[...] David Braben, co-author of the iconic Elite game.[...]".
I'm afraid it's very possible that there won't be a feature rework and U18 could be mainly bug fixing and maybe tie up some loose ends of the Thargoid war.
Of course more positive outcomes are still possible, but imho not the most likely ones.
Last time a lot of people believed (or hoped) that continuing support and development for the existing portfolio means things will be fine for Elite, but this again doubles down on talking about CMS specifically. Literally the only time Elite is mentioned in this report is "[...] David Braben, co-author of the iconic Elite game.[...]".
I'm afraid it's very possible that there won't be a feature rework and U18 could be mainly bug fixing and maybe tie up some loose ends of the Thargoid war.
Of course more positive outcomes are still possible, but imho not the most likely ones.
That is pretty much what I was expecting. Concentration on core competency (management, parkitectural games). F1 wasn't that greatly received and they dropped support for it like a hot potato. I was surprised they would immediately come forth with a follow-up, but they have a license and that's gotta be amortised. I'm not convinced the new F1 will be much better, but I guess they keep churning it out to make ends meet.
Given how much negative sentiment, as well as cash reserves, they've invested in taking those write-downs so they can talk about them, I think we are now in the situation that if it hasn't been mentioned in all of that, it's simply not getting funding. So yes I also think new features/mechanics are off the table completely now.
In TIME terms it's either a Tolerate or a Maintain - I don't see them Exiting something that generates cash and especially now they've committed to burning cash faster in effect, by amortising IP investment over shorter periods. So me personally I think the game is safe for now, but I don't see anything else happening with it. This message to the market makes it pretty obvious the people who were let go were the people with non-CMS skills.
Or to put that another super-cynical way, your ARX spend in 2024 is funding that CMS in 2025...
(Unless someone comes along to buy it now it's clear that FDev are a CMS company; which would be a passion investment of some sort, just like the original Kickstarter. It would be very hard for FDev to make it look like a going concern and put it on the open market, especially without a physics games team around, but that doesn't preclude someone approaching them rather than the other way around.)
In TIME terms it's either a Tolerate or a Maintain - I don't see them Exiting something that generates cash and especially now they've committed to burning cash faster in effect, by amortising IP investment over shorter periods. So me personally I think the game is safe for now, but I don't see anything else happening with it. This message to the market makes it pretty obvious the people who were let go were the people with non-CMS skills.
Or to put that another super-cynical way, your ARX spend in 2024 is funding that CMS in 2025...
(Unless someone comes along to buy it now it's clear that FDev are a CMS company; which would be a passion investment of some sort, just like the original Kickstarter. It would be very hard for FDev to make it look like a going concern and put it on the open market, especially without a physics games team around, but that doesn't preclude someone approaching them rather than the other way around.)
The presentation can be downloaded at https://www.frontier.co.uk/investors
As far as news for Elite goes the graphs on pages 13 and 14 are about it:
- it's still been profitable in cashflow terms during the last 12 months, narrowly
- revenue was down compared with last year, though only slightly
- comparing last year to this year on both revenue and cashflow, expenditure in 2023 appears slightly up on 2022. This is probably just inflation since the graphs are in nominal £s.
So ... certainly not enough there to justify big expenditures (and no likelihood of anything before FY2027).
Whether development at the current pace continues probably depends on how big a fraction of the total operating costs it makes up already, and how much they think it contributes to keeping ongoing sales going.
As far as news for Elite goes the graphs on pages 13 and 14 are about it:
- it's still been profitable in cashflow terms during the last 12 months, narrowly
- revenue was down compared with last year, though only slightly
- comparing last year to this year on both revenue and cashflow, expenditure in 2023 appears slightly up on 2022. This is probably just inflation since the graphs are in nominal £s.
So ... certainly not enough there to justify big expenditures (and no likelihood of anything before FY2027).
Whether development at the current pace continues probably depends on how big a fraction of the total operating costs it makes up already, and how much they think it contributes to keeping ongoing sales going.
PC, PZ, and JWE1 have all overtaken Elite, JWE2 is about to. Business model also plays a role obviously. Arx is the only income for Elite currently, while PZ or JWE2 got a couple of paid DLCs in the same time frame.
These are waaaay cheaper and easier to produce though (I assume), since the are usually "just" a few extra animals/dinosaurs without new game mechanics. Even Elite's unpaid updates are more complex. Maybe a somewhat reasonable comparison would be one new ship per quarter for 15-20 bucks each. Would players be happy with that? I feel Elite's playerbase is more demanding than PZ's for example.
These are waaaay cheaper and easier to produce though (I assume), since the are usually "just" a few extra animals/dinosaurs without new game mechanics. Even Elite's unpaid updates are more complex. Maybe a somewhat reasonable comparison would be one new ship per quarter for 15-20 bucks each. Would players be happy with that? I feel Elite's playerbase is more demanding than PZ's for example.