Elite is clearly stagnating to death.. FDEV should do this instead of too much emphasis on Thargoid content..

[Lateralus]

Thargoid content is all well and good (I used to like it but in small doses), but it only appeals to those who were already engaged with it, which is a minority... The rest of the playerbase has been forgotten about. It's kind of bizarre and hard to understand why a game developer would do this to its former flagship title but here we are...

Anyway there is at least one sure way to bring players back before the damage is irreversible - just give the players (on both sides of the argument) what they have been asking for since 2014..

I'm proposing two districts of approx 25 (can be more if required) systems each (slightly out of the bubble as to not disrupt existing control dynamics) :

• 1 open only district
  • Permit locked to open play
  • Unique high paying rare commodities to trade in/out district
  • Squadron territory control feature (scaled down powerplay) active only within the district
  • PvP focused points of interest - think Jumptown or Ghost Hollow from Star Citizen, or the Dark Zone from the division - space and surface based areas
  • District 'most wanted' and 'top pvp bounty hunter' leaderboards
  • Blocking only affects coms here
  • No 15 sec logout timer, just a 'you are in combat' message so you can't logout until you are in a safe area
• 1 open PvE district
  • Smart round experimental in effect by default for all weapons (except against players marked wanted or players who attack wanted players - making any pvp here fully consentual)
  • Smart round effect extended to ram damage (with same rules as weapons)
  • Unique high paying rare commodities to trade in and out of district
  • Unique points of interest to visit on planets and space. Can be natural or man-made structures
  • Squadron territory control feature, same as open only district but more focused on PvE activities

Additions that could further enhance this concept:

• Base building - linked to Squadron territory control (bases not exclusive to these districts but only in the context of Squadron territory control)
• A selection of new ships and ground vehicles to drive up interest
• Some kind of narrative driven event to introduce both districts... like a Feds vs Imps vs Alliance conflict or colonisation race to control the new resources. Perhaps incorporating Powerplay in some way.

I know this is a fair amount of developer work, so FDEV would need to invest a fair amount into this but if FDEV continue to just add Thargoid content and cosmetics, I think this game will continue to fade into obscurity and eventually die.

Also, new ships alone are not enough.. we would still have the same lack of motivation to play.

ED needs the shot in the arm these additions give... fresh reasons for players to come back and play again, whether they are veterens who have left or new players.

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

I like your additional ideas.

However, on the PvP side of things, I just wonder how many ED players actually want to do PvP... I don't know the percentage, but my (expansive) gut feeling is that it's relatively small compared to those who prefer solo/group activity. I may well be wrong.

I certainly agree the 'Goid content is pretty major at this point and other aspects of the game need developing.

 

[Lateralus]

I like your additional ideas.

However, on the PvP side of things, I just wonder how many ED players actually want to do PvP... I don't know the percentage, but my (expansive) gut feeling is that it's relatively small compared to those who prefer solo/group activity. I may well be wrong.

I certainly agree the 'Goid content is pretty major at this point and other aspects of the game need developing.

There was a huge PvP community, but they mostly got driven away by lack of content... I was there, it was great for a time but died off.

 

[varonica]

I like your additional ideas.

However, on the PvP side of things, I just wonder how many ED players actually want to do PvP... I don't know the percentage, but my (expansive) gut feeling is that it's relatively small compared to those who prefer solo/group activity. I may well be wrong.

I certainly agree the 'Goid content is pretty major at this point and other aspects of the game need developing.

Yeah the danger is they may spend a lot of time and effort developing exclusive content for a very small group of people rather than developing stuff that everyone can play and thus drive away a proportion of the player base rather than get more players. There's no guarantee that having PvP only zones will attract new players so that's basically speculation based on no data.

 

[Lateralus]

Yeah let's not start the anti-pvp rhetoric... this is supposed to be a balanced proposal for both sides of the argument. Trust me there's a huge PvP community who would return... just got to look at how many players were active in the PvP discords pre Odyssey... thousands.

 

[SteveWW57]

Yeah let's not start the anti-pvp rhetoric... this is supposed to be a balanced proposal for both sides of the argument. Trust me there's a huge PvP community who would return... just got to look at how many players were active in the PvP discords pre Odyssey... thousands.

If they were playing, why did they stop playing? It's not as if they were banned, and if there were plenty of them active, then they could have continued PvP.

Steve

 

[Fixitman]

Regarding the title, ED is not stagnating to death. Your interest is what's stagnating, and that's not the same for everyone. Broad assumptions based on personal opinion are rather pointless.

Your suggestions may have merit, but the title tells me there's no point in reading them.

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

Smart round effect extended to ram damage (with same rules as weapons)

This makes griefing/blocking the mailslot etc easier actually?

The suggestion itself might be ok, but at the current rate of development I could see frontier maybe delivering one item int he list or one "point of interest/activity area" per patch every 3-4 months and I think more people would complain about only getting pvp content they'll never engage with which is geared towards a minority of players etc.

Regarding the title, ED is not stagnating to death. Your interest is what's stagnating, and that's not the same for everyone. Broad assumptions based on personal opinion are rather pointless.

It's definitely stagnating and suffering from it - especially the stuff added in odyssey that hasn't seen enough tweaking/rebalancing to truly work. It's not an issue of new gameplay or content as much as old gameplay being broken or unfun and not being fixed which makes the old content significantly worse and not worth revisiting after the novelty wears off.

 

[jojon]

Not commenting on this thread specifically, but on the entire vibe that has seemed strikingly prevalent the last couple of weeks: The one complaint I can't recall people bandying about, back with Mass Effect 3, was: "Meeeeh, more bloody Reapers, booooring". ;P

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Trust me there's a huge PvP community who would return... just got to look at how many players were active in the PvP discords pre Odyssey... thousands.

Sure, but you could say that of most communities pre-Odyssey - almost everywhere was busier then. Player numbers didn't take a nosedive post-Odyssey just because a few thousand PvPers were fed up (and if those PvPers thought that the pre-Odyssey game was great, then Legacy still exists; get a few thousand PvPers into a few nominated systems there and it won't matter that the rest of the Legacy galaxy isn't doing much)

Discord numbers don't mean a lot - but AXI's has about 17,500 members, which is about ten times what I remember the largest PvP-focused discord having (and in a different direction, about 50% bigger than the very long-standing FleetComm exploration discord). AX is a minority interest (so is every game activity complex enough to be worth setting up communities around) but it's one of the more popular ones.

(More Thargoid/AX content is highly unlikely to increase the amount I play either. But there's one of me, so that's not a big deal)

 

[Aris Tarkus]

I like most of what you originally posted except' having areas limited to a particular style of play is not a good idea as you will then be isolating a part of the playable game from certain players.

 

[yianniv]

(More Thargoid/AX content is highly unlikely to increase the amount I play either. But there's one of me, so that's not a big deal)

Make that: two.

 

[varonica]

Yeah let's not start the anti-pvp rhetoric... this is supposed to be a balanced proposal for both sides of the argument. Trust me there's a huge PvP community who would return... just got to look at how many players were active in the PvP discords pre Odyssey... thousands.

That's a very subjective measure, a concentrated community of PvP'ers may seem a lot of people, but how many is that, what total percentage of the population do they make up? FDEV have said in the past that the vast majority of players never PvP, maybe they actually know what they are talking about, all you have is subjective opinions. Just like your opinion that my post was anti-PvP rhetoric, it wasn't, it was merely questioning the position that concentrating on PvP would be worthwhile. Fact is PvP still exists in the game, it has never in fact changed, PvP is exactly the same as it was when "thousands" were active on the PvP discords. Maybe ask yourself why the numbers have dropped when the conditions haven't.

 

[Fixitman]

It's definitely stagnating and suffering from it - especially the stuff added in odyssey that hasn't seen enough tweaking/rebalancing to truly work. It's not an issue of new gameplay or content as much as old gameplay being broken or unfun and not being fixed which makes the old content significantly worse and not worth revisiting after the novelty wears off.

No, it's not. I play every day, and I'm enjoying it every day. There are many others who feel the same way. They aren't posting their view because they're too busy enjoying the game.

It's not stagnating just because some people are losing interest. It's only their interest that's stagnating. The game has plenty to do for those who can or will take the time to digest it fully. Blasting through a narrow line of content will almost always lead to an equally fast loss of interest. I believe that's where the illusion of "stagnation" is truly coming from.

Edit: Yes, I'd like to see something new besides more Thargoid content. I personally have no use for the bug war. The only Thargoid I've ever seen was in videos, never in-game. Regardless, there's plenty to keep me busy while I watch the war unfold from a distance.

 

[Kira Goto]

So, while the ideas presented might have merit, I wouldn’t expect Frontier to just switch rails immediately regardless of anything said - they’re going to be heavily invested in seeing the Thargoid narrative through, so there is a strong chance most or all of the Elite team [that can make content for it] will be working on just that.

Anyhow, about the idea itself - how would they go about implementing separate PvE and PvP areas anyway? Genuinely curious about that.

minds the dead CQC horse in the middle of the room

 

[Tyres O'Flaherty]

So... (a bit OT now but...) do we think the Thargoid thing will ever end?

 

[Disemboweled Ego]

No, it's not. I play every day, and I'm enjoying it every day. There are many others who feel the same way. They aren't posting their view because they're too busy enjoying the game.

It's not stagnating just because some people are losing interest. It's only their interest that's stagnating. The game has plenty to do for those who can or will take the time to digest it fully. Blasting through a narrow line of content will almost always lead to an equally fast loss of interest. I believe that's where the illusion of "stagnation" is truly coming from.

Enjoying what's there doesn't mean it's perfect and not everyone is losing interest because they exhaust the content. There's also the oft-cited grind and the fact that many mechanics are a confusing unintuitive mess (and the in-game explanations are plain wrong or misleading).

It's very much a mixed bag, some of what's there is great already and some of it hasn't been touched or addressed in years and could be way better.

Going with the approach of just adding new content to fix old problems without actually going back and fixing the old stuff just leaves those things further behind.

 

[Darrack]

Anyway there is at least one sure way to bring players back before the damage is irreversible - just give the players (on both sides of the argument) what they have been asking for since 2014..

Who's been asking for it? The small number of PvPers?
The Thargoid stuff is only a small part of the game and actually offers a lot to us explorers and questers, you dont have to shoot things.
Open only areas with higher rewards? Here we go again.

O7

 

[Ryox]

Agree with OP, Elite is one of the best PvP game on the market and it's a shame that FDev didn't manage to capitalize on that.

It's especially true for the On-Foot part. The gunplay and mechanics are mainly designed for PvP and become quickly boring in PvE. But it never really took off because:

1) There are no "choke points" that create a natural congregation of on-foot players (except Arai's Mine).

2) On-foot CZ in Open Play has never been even playable, because of the many game-breaking bugs (scores frozen, etc.)

The monthly Combat CG (Combat Bonds oriented) was a great idea for on-foot PvP. People were showing up, but then they all gave up quickly after understanding that CZ were broken (bugged).

P.S. to OP: Don't bother arguing too much about PvP on the forum, people here barely understand the concept. The real players all moved to Discord.

 

[Darrack]

Don't bother arguing too much about PvP on the forum, people here barely understand the concept. The real players all moved to Discord.

Mate you cant have Open pvp in Elite, Open is a joke, its rife with hackers and griefers.
Ive spent a week out at the Thargoid/Guardian battlesite yet still apparently managed to 'one shot' some commanders flying a chieftain in HIP 19600??
Until the hacking is sorted you can forget it.

O7