Elite is not doomed (FD are currently rolling in cash https://www.pcgamesn.com/jurassic-world-evolution/sales) but its not exactly shining like a diamond either. Bugs and an unfocused dev direction are holding it back. It does not help that the perception of ED is of a screenshot simulator (For example Reddit is 95% 'look at this pretty moon / ship- i.e. low value community generated content), and that outside of player groups fighting there is a general weakness in the immediate FD directed lore and story of the game.
Elite is not Doomed
- Thread starter TheSynopticVision
- Start date
'The game is dying because FDEV doesn't listen to my demands' is not criticism. It's a very poor attempt of blackmailing.
That's my judgement too cmdr,
I've put aside my two cmdr's, the first one with over 53wks on the game clock. Both are now parked up......waiting. Waiting for FD to give me some form of communication that something other than empty statements, will get me playing again.
But no, I still wait, parked up & really only expecting to dust down the 'old' ships in 14-17 months time....
....Meanwhile the discount purchase of NMS, is keeping me entertained & filling the void left from FD!
FDev do talk to the Elite community, just not on these forums much anymore. Check Reddit, Twitter, and Twitch, they chat plenty with us
Are the forums doomed?
NOOOOOO
Playing forums is the ultimate end game.
They do pop up on social media but there's not much of substance they pop up on here but don't seem to talk about anything useful.
I say devs, I mean the CM team I saw Adam Burke-Waite jumped in on the FSS discussion which was nice but the last time a CM said anything that addressed some talking points was Paige on cheating who pretty much googled "how to say something whilst saying absolutely nothing" and pasted it in here.
I'm thinking more of just of their output over the game's life with fairly consistent staffing etc. For whatever reasons Seasons were deemed to be not working. (And I'd agree with that - it's hard to assemble a flagpole in pieces over a year+, while also making each part of the construction entertaining in its own right. Poles aren't that interesting
. And attempts to make them so can end up with a wonky flagpole ) So they've put their emphasis on a classical unified expansion effort instead, with the main game reduced to a 'maintenance +' status as a result.
They clearly tried the prior model because of the GAAS ideal. But ED is just trying to do too much with their available resources. It's an MMO, an offline solo adventure, a co-op experience, an open world 1:1 galaxy, a VR game, etc etc. They took on too much to service all of it consistently, and this is them acknowledging that.
As much as I'd love to hear more from the devs, with the core game in 'maintenance+' I think the actual experience would be pretty painful. Almost all questions about improvements to core gameplay would be met with 'we don't have the capacity', just expressed in a beige rainbow of phraseologies. 'Would love to' / 'On the list' etc. Bleh.
And then there's the expansion focus. Dav's a good example here. There's a general presumption that networking improvements would be needed for a Legs expansion. Dav is probably busy working on expansion-related stuff, so he can't really sit for 2 hours and happily chat about what he's up to.
It'd be interesting, don't get me wrong, and I'd happily see that deep into their design process. But I can see why they don't do it. Some of it is to retain the surprise of new features (& the associated marketing buzz near point of sale). Some of it is to take the pressure off the devs and leave them free to experiment. And some of it is to avoid the classic: 'You were working on this cool thing, you didn't deliver the cool thing, I bought skins to support you making the cool thing, I will do bad things to your grandmother now...' stuff.
You hold up the example of a game that goes full blown on that stuff. But I'd argue they've gone way too far in that direction, to the point that discussing the details of (often never-to-be-realised) functionality has become marketing tool in its own right. They're well down the slippery slope there.
A look into the middle-distance would be cool though for ED. I'm sure it'll return. Today just ain't that day.
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There is a lot of fine line walking, objectively you can say "Fdevs update schedule is slow compared to some other online games" (can be backed up with evidence) speculatively you could then say "and this could slow interest in the game" (a reasonable link to make) which can lead to subjectively "and this is why no one plays the game" (we have no facts to back this up at all).
Unfortunately many people have valid points lost in hyperbole of why the game is dead and state it as fact instead of opinion.
from my perspective I've lost interest in the game just through number of hours played with little new things to do (from my perspective). This, by no means, means the game is dead even if it is a little for me at the moment.
If I never play again will Fdev close? absolutely not my £5 every now and then is probably not keeping them afloat!
It would be good if all posts had a little grounding but it can be funny seeing the exclamations of absolute knowledge from people, and thats what we're all here for - Forum lolz.
Yes you are wrong, it has been worse.
Why are you doomsaying its the real question? Your latest forum squabbles not gone your way?
Saying that the game is not doing as well as it might, is not the same as saying the game is doomed.
The game is doing better than ever, and it is in the better state it ever was since launch.
When I see talks of "half-baked mechanics" for something other than Powerplay/CQC, I have a giggle, and when I read "Elite is dead" or "Elite is in maintenance mode" it's a full laugh, let me tell you
Come back here a week or two after the 2020 update and you'll see "It didn't save the game, the game is dead" topics again. 100% certain of it.
When I see talks of "half-baked mechanics" for something other than Powerplay/CQC, I have a giggle, and when I read "Elite is dead" or "Elite is in maintenance mode" it's a full laugh, let me tell you
Come back here a week or two after the 2020 update and you'll see "It didn't save the game, the game is dead" topics again. 100% certain of it.
A concept art and everything is forgotten.
Yes but Eilte, FE2 and FFE are dead too, but they have left a trace in the history and also a progeny for each of them.
Haven't read the whole thread yet but personally I don't feel like the general atmosphere around the community is particularly negative at the moment (putting aside the recent focus on cheating), it's just quiet. Listening to things like the Lave Radio and Guard Frequency podcasts it's apparent that, as well as a not entirely surprising lack of dev news, there's also a lull in noteworthy community activity for those channels to report on. This is backed up by a recent conversation with Sagittarius Eye magazine where there's a slight sense that many of the major subjects have now been covered. They've done articles on many of the ships, most of the major factions and leadIng galactic figures, the major in-game activities and many of the major player groups like the Fuel Rats, the Hutton Truckers, the Buckyball and Elite Racing groups, and we're not seeing many new leading lights in the community to focus on. I feel like mainly what people are doing is just getting on with quietly and uneventfully playing the game - especially now that DW2 is over. Not quite sure what to do about this (or whether indeed anything needs doing). We have Lavecon coming up soon and I do have hopes that FD might be planning on revealing something there in their Saturday panel.
You're entitled to your opinion, of course. Many people love NMS, but it's really not my bag despite the squillions of planets to walk about on.
Edit: Nice sig btw
I wish people could read.
I said this before, and I'll keep saying it: Elite is not dying and will most likely never die (until Frontier decides to shut the servers, that is). Why? Because there is a substantial hard core of players (mostly -- but not only -- the 1984ers and the VR crowd) who will keep playing it even if nothing else new will ever come, because all they want is a nostalgia trip, flying their spaceship from A to B (perhaps in VR), and chatting with their friends about lore and pretend in-game happenings. This easily-pleased crowd will keep buying enough paintjobs to keep the game alive indefinitely. Thus Elite is not doomed and it will never die.
Will it be a fully realised game? That's a whole other question.
The catorization only happens in your head which leads to your statement my argument being poor. But when you look at the game, you really can't tell me the gameplay is good, balanced or of any quality.
Elite is advertised as an MMO, however, you start to run into frequent problems when just connecting to a single other player.
PvE is utterly imbalanced and unchallenging. Ever since engineers, PvE has become a duck hunting fest.
Trading is obsolete. You only need void opal mining for a week to cover all your shopping list costs.
Grinding for materials may be somewhat of a decent gameplay but at some point you arrive at HGE farming which makes all other grinding methods obsolete and you end up with pin-shotting signal sources for hours.
Thargoid hunting may be challenging but their gameplay is dull since you run away for minutes waiting for its shields to drop. This could be easily fixed for example through giving it a heart regeneration sequence when their shields come up so players are forced to shoot the shield instead of running away or otherwise their damage gets negated.
And ofcourse, the overall feeling of Elite is disrupted by countless bugs happening in all areas but mainly in the connectivity sector.
The only thing Elite doesn't encounter too many issues and imbalances is screenshotting. And even there the skybox is Still not fixed and often shows clusters of stars in cubic forms. This issue is still a leftover from day 1.
So those that enjoy a screenshot generator (which the game really is good at) those players are statisfied. Anyone who doesn't enjoy this and wishes to play another part of the game, most likely will encounter imbalances, bugs and other issues frequently and are more and more drawn away from Elite Dangerous.
The result, a filter where only the picture viewers still have their entertainment. And by this I do not mean explorers because they too argue that the giant galaxy has nothing to it. You can see alot of stuff but that's it. All those tourist spots and sight seeing tours are just that. You can even fly through a black hole, like come one. What the heck.
£ 89 is impressive. It is indirectly very good for the development of ED.
You put it better than me, that's kind of what I meant. "Low tide" seems to describe it. The problem is that I don't see an "high tide" coming at any time during the next 12 months, unless they start leaking 2020 stuff very deliberately in order to make the hype train chug along. And I wonder if there's a good slice of people who're silently calling it quits, and I'm not sure if the 2020 Messiah Update will be enough to bring them back.
The long wait makes everyday life monotonous for many people.
Some information could reinvigorate, revitalize.
However it seems that the number of Cmdrs on the forums is constant.
DeletedUser191218
D
The issue is people take extreme positions where this game is concerned. You're nuanced view is treated with suspicion by either side. I still think ED is a great implementation of what it is but it still feels like a game in beta for me. Mission packs would really help. I sometimes think the idea of ED is better than actually playing it.
For eg, I jumped on last night. None of my friends were on (very common these days). I did a couple of elite assassinatiom missions and then had nothing to do. So I flew around Sol hoping to see someone...even if just to be ganked and have that mini game of running away as something to do. Not a soul turned up. So (after waiting) I did some MC bounties in a guy's anaconda with fighters. No chat and boring fights. I realised the guy was nearby so instead opted to go find him and grief the poor sod - i realise the moral questions of this act but boredom was all-consuming by this stage. In summary, look and feel is great, combat is great, good economy, etc etc but at the moment I just have nothing to do. It can STILL be a great game but it needs depth.
No, it happened in what you wrote. You made the cateogrization.