They are still advertising for the AI Vehicle programmer: AI Vehicle Programmer Discipline: Programming Location: Cambridge Employment Type: Permanent Closing Date: 06 September 2019
if you are referring to multi-crew, arena, powerplay, camera suite, holo-me, night vision, codex, FSS, the new mining update... most of them should have been in the game since the very beginning and they are for the most part QOL
So far that didn't stop the doomsayers from misusing Steamcharts. They'll just compare the peak numbers of the Horizons launch to average players on a Tuesday at 4 AM (at the first warm day of the year and right in between two major updates). I always tried to explain them why it doesn't make sense, but it never helped because they all put me on ignore as soon as I disagreed with them.
Don't know where these guys are, haven't seen a good Steamcharts thread in months. They probably couldn't figure out how to use the new forums.
Nobody was doing the thing you just described. If your manner of disagreeing involved caricaturing their position and making bad faith arguments like you just did here, it's no wonder you were put on ignore.
Nobody was doing the thing you just described. If your manner of disagreeing involved caricaturing their position and making bad faith arguments like you just did here, it's no wonder you were put on ignore.
I just looked at the chart and the game is remarkably stable, with a basically the same average player count now as in the beginning 4 years ago. That's probably why you don't hear about it from any doom preachers.
OK, but real talk: if the game is continuing to sell more and more copies, and the active player numbers aren't growing, what gives? Doesn't that imply that players are dumping the game at about the same rate that new players are getting into the game? And with the barrier to entry at $7 one would hope that concurrent player numbers would be rising substantially by now. If the player base isn't growing, and this is supposedly an MMO, that's a problem, no?
I've actually noticed a lot more people playing on PS4 in recent months, and the membership on the Elite Community pages has had a significant bump since the April update. Almost every day I see someone new in the Elite Training Terminal community page on ps4 complaining about how the "controls suck", asking about "how to bind controls", asking other CMDRs for help, or ranting about how hard the combat is after failing the combat training scenario. Imo that means Elite is still going strong lol
Before the update there seemed to be a lot less activity.
OK, but real talk: if the game is continuing to sell more and more copies, and the active player numbers aren't growing, what gives? Doesn't that imply that players are dumping the game at about the same rate that new players are getting into the game? And with the barrier to entry at $7 one would hope that concurrent player numbers would be rising substantially by now. If the player base isn't growing, and this is supposedly an MMO, that's a problem, no?
Sigh. Steam charts are not active player numbers. They are concurrent player numbers.
But you may be correct. Depends where they bought the game. On steam that maybe the case, but it could also be that some don't go through steam to open the game or have got an oculus key, or bought the game on the oculus store or through the frontier store directly and then there are the consoles too which wouldn't show up at all. But there most likely will be a churn rate though. Happens in all games.
I doubt it. NDAs are very hard to make stick. There's a bunch of ways around them. If there's something that's particularly sensitive commercially, such as in this case, I reckon there's a handful of people who know that number.
I'm delighted that Frontier are doing well. But as far as Elite is concerned, a lot still hinges on the next big update. It's in a natural ebb at the moment. Looking at the Mobius PG the last time I was on a week or two ago. 20k players all offline. That would be concerning despite the financial report.
No doubt Frontier will continue to thrive, but the level of development depends on the demand for a title.
"I'm delighted that Frontier are doing well. But as far as Elite is concerned, a lot still hinges on the next big update. It's in a natural ebb at the moment. Looking at the Mobius PG the last time I was on a week or two ago. 20k players all offline. That would be concerning despite the financial report."
The widget posting # online is bugged for large groups. (has been for a long time now.)
Also, my browser hates the quote function.
Won't be happening (with the exception of the 2020 update): If you carefully delve into the double speak of the OP last paragraph, it pretty much says that Frontier have changed their policy (financial/accounting/actual) of ''capitalising'' the free updates of the published games.
The ''high'' previous expenditure or ''capitalisation'' on these ''free updates'' was due to the then large deployment of staff on these activities. This has now, going forward, changed to focusing on ''chargeable products'' i.e. redeploying the bulk of staff and ''capitalisation'' onto new products that make the most money going forward. As I read it; this means that Fdev have no intention of significant ''capitalisation'' on Elite Dangerous/Horizons in the future. We know a ''skeleton'' crew are now working on the base game to ''continue to support existing players''. Whilst a ''capitalisation'' crew are beavering away at the EDH 2020 ''Update''; and I extrapolate that with the change of ''policy'' once this new EDH ''PDLC'' is published in 2020 the ''capitalisation'' will again move on to fresh new products that make the most money going forward, leaving a minimal ''maintenance'' skeleton crew to ''continue to support existing players''.
Final thoughts:
(1) Major bug fixes that have been needed from time in memorial, surely require considerable input from the original game coders and I guess THEY are working away at new ''capitalisation'' or optimum money making projects..... leaving our much asked for myriad of bug fixes languishing in their wake (Unless of course, the 2020 ''PDLC'' revamps the whole EDH ''canvas'' giving us a fresh bug-free EDH picture????)
(2) We sort of knew of this state of affairs from circumstantial evidence but here in black and white is FDev's stated intention and policy going forward into their ''new'' financial and publishing territory. We have to remember that first and foremost Frontier are a business with responsibilities to their shareholders and not in the business of addressing our every wish and desire as the users of their products.
o7
''Capitalisation of development costs on franchise assets and other game related intangibles accounted for £14.8 million in the period (FY18: £13.4 million). As a consequence the percentage of gross research and development costs which were capitalised reduced to 70% compared to 85% for the last financial year. This reduction resulted mainly from the interaction of two factors. Firstly, the Company refined the application of its capitalisation accounting policy with effect from 1 June 2018, such that only development activity associated with new chargeable products would be capitalised (subject to the usual criteria set out under accounting standard IAS 38). Secondly, during the first six months of the financial year a substantial number of Frontier's development team were engaged on the Beyond series of free updates for Elite Dangerous (which concluded in December 2018) and a number of free updates for Jurassic World Evolution and Planet Coaster. Whilst costs for those activities were not capitalised during the period as they were developments of existing released products rather than new products, Frontier believes that investment in free updates is an important part of its strategy in supporting and nurturing games after launch. A higher percentage of costs were capitalised in the second half of the financial year and to date in the current financial year as a greater proportion of staff have been working on development activity associated with new chargeable products, including paid downloadable content (PDLC) for existing game franchises. ''
1) They shifted to spending manpower on products to sell. (Doesn't seem novel to me, but hey).
2) They have multiple teams working on such products, one of them working on an ED expansion.
3) Afterwards they'll continue working on products to sell.
4) ???
5) They will not work on another ED expansion to sell.
Now here is my alternative:
1) If Next Era sells well they'll work on another expansion. If not they won't.
OK, but real talk: if the game is continuing to sell more and more copies, and the active player numbers aren't growing, what gives? Doesn't that imply that players are dumping the game at about the same rate that new players are getting into the game? And with the barrier to entry at $7 one would hope that concurrent player numbers would be rising substantially by now. If the player base isn't growing, and this is supposedly an MMO, that's a problem, no?
OK, but real talk: if the game is continuing to sell more and more copies, and the active player numbers aren't growing, what gives? Doesn't that imply that players are dumping the game at about the same rate that new players are getting into the game? And with the barrier to entry at $7 one would hope that concurrent player numbers would be rising substantially by now.
Not really, since the game isn't subscription based. It's enough if some people buy the game, a paintjob and maybe the next expansion.
Anyway, we don't know if the player base is growing or not. If Steam Charts shows 4000 concurrent players for August 2019 and 4000 concurrent players for August 2018 there is no way to know if the player base increased, decreased or remained the same because it doesn't take the time people spend in game into account. If the average time / day / player is 1 hour there are 96k active players on Steam. If it's 2 hours there are only 48k active players on Steam. The question is, can we assume that the time an average player spends in game stays the same 5 years after release?
PS
When the game was released I almost played it every day, sometimes for hours. 5 years later I play it for 2 hours a week. I am still an active part of the player base though.
PPS
That doesn't mean the game would be without issues, perfect and that Frontier did everything right. There are a lot of issues and lots of very questionable decisions. It's just that Steamcharts are no proof for your argument (whatever it is). If someone would claim that the game needs cockpit cats (me) and that FDEV are incompetent for not implementing them (me again) and shows a Steamcharts chart as proof he didn't actually made a point, he just made himself look silly (still me).
That's perfectly normal, happens to (almost) every game. In fact, most games would have a decreasing player base while Elite is a notable exception.
Not really, since the game isn't subscription based. It's enough if some people buy the game, a paintjob and maybe the next expansion.
Anyway, we don't know if the player base is growing or not. If Steam Charts shows 4000 concurrent players for August 2019 and 4000 concurrent players for August 2018 there is no way to know if the player base increased, decreased or remained the same because it doesn't take the time people spend in game into account. If the average time / day / player is 1 hour there are 96k active players on Steam. If it's 2 hours there are only 48k active players on Steam. The question is, can we assume that the time an average player spends in game stays the same 5 years after release?
Something to keep in mind is that the Mobius group got too big and they now have multiple groups (Mobius-Eurasia and Mobius-US I believe they are on the PC). The Mobius admins are trying to run down the main Mobius list and push everyone over to one of the other groups.
I should really get myself moved over to Mobius-Eurasia at some point
those are, for the most part, QOL content.
i agree it deserved a whole dedicated update, but not 4 to 5 years to get what we got.
Kickstarter started in Nov 5, 2012, the game came out in Dec 16, 2014
let's give them one extra year for margin error, heck, let's say they started the dev in 2010
So i took 4 years to create the Elite we got when it got out more or less. Sounds very ok to me. They must have worked hard no doubts.
After the game came out, the only real new stuff we had was horizons with the SRV, the rest was mostly QOL.
if you compare the first 4 years (from 2010 to 2014) and compare from the last 4 years (from 2015 to 2019) the quantity and quality of content is not equal. And It shouldn't even be equal, it should be superior since FD made a ton of money since release.
We still can't change the color HUD, we still need to use Dr Kaii app or Arkku website...
I'm just disappointed, if you are happy with the pace of development, good for you, i envy you.
I was expecting more from FD but i guess that's my fault.
