It can be optional sub, for those wanting to further support game, and get some non-game breaking fluff and perks. You can still play and do everything without the optional perks sub. Take the blinders off mate, and try to see the whole picture.
Horizons to Odyssey whats the path where are we going this expansion?
- Thread starter Muzz UK
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ESO is optional sub. which is what ED should employ. 100% optional.
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Capitalism's greatest achievement is convincing people that they want to give money to a billion dollar software company to 'further game support'.
Talk about 'blinders'
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Some optimisations & fixes, a bit of narrative plus re-work of a major gameplay loop. Frontier have told us have they not?
What we are not getting is a relaunch, a 2nd wind, a new initiative etc etc just plodding along a steady road to retirement.
Absolutely.
Frontier's problem is that it takes them 3-4 years to develop and release a Horizons / Odyssey-sized expansion. Doesn't matter whether they slice it up into small releases or put it out as one big thing; either way that pace is nowhere near what players want from them, and nowhere near as fast as they were expecting to go back when they initially announced Horizons.
Slice it up like Horizons and they end up committing a lot of effort to things which might not work that well (e.g. Multicrew) with less option to just quietly drop them; do it all at once like Odyssey and it's years of quiet before the release with no significant changes, and then a really big mess if it doesn't work; just go for smaller expansions that they can mostly-reliably develop in a year like Beyond or Odyssey Warmfixes and they're limited as to their ability to actually sell them.
It all adds up to the fact that FDev isn't very good at software. I'm sure they've got talented people on board, but the environment they're working in seems to be crippling their productivity. There are clearly issues in both project and configuration management that no amount of rockstar developers can overcome.
Normally i would agree but to be fair nobody asked for powerplay but we got it, the same can be said for CQC and engineers. All mechanics nobody knew they wanted and some still dont.
FCs seem to fill the get ALL your ships to a place with you and have a mobile strike platform to do something from. For some a luxury for others a necessity.
The flaws of Horizon have to do with the (still flawed) content of Horizons, far more so than any indecisiveness on Fdev's end with which financial development model to follow.
The internal pipeline they have has proven to not be up to par, despite the technical prowess of the development teams involved. There's been clear signs of internal turmoil and lack of focus, as well as a poor sense for designing enjoyable game loops, for years now. Should those issues be rectified with clear heads manning the decision-making chairs with a firm vision of where to take things moving forward, along with a good idea of what makes games fun to experience as a player, I'm confident that not only could Horizon's and Odyssey's issues be nailed down, development of future content could also resume apace.
Whichever way you look at things, of course, the ball remains in their court. It's up to them to formulate the means necessary to return it to the goal net.
Unfortunately the constantly changing team is another issue for the game they keep moving the team around to other projects, if you want decisive development keep a tight knit team who know the engine and have a passion for ED not a ragtag group who just want to churn out quick flash for instant gratification. We want DBOBEs original vision not Fortnite with planets 
Yup, some kind of battle pass to play & earn ARX/cosmetics. I also agree Frontier hasn't monetized the game very well and that resulted in glacial-paced development (though that also means they're on the opposite spectrum of companies that monetize too much). As the game has a mostly mature audience we spend hundreds on fancy VR, Hotas and such so throwing more at Frontier for better-paced development wouldn't be a problem.
Did your guide dog suggest that comment?
ESO is elder scrolls online, a monthly pay to play game similar to World of Warcraft. Not sure what you're talking about. ED should not be pay to play, it's an antiquated gaming philosophy.
He was saying it has both free and paid-for options:
The subscription provides additional stufz.
Would alienate a huge number of players who have put in 1000s of hours and still actively play this game hardcore. The thing is the game is still steady and still fulfilling a potential of some sort. If we had experienced a long decline would indicate there's not a market for Elite anyway. Probably would require new crowdfunding too.
You normally see when a company fractures the player base when releasing a new product as "the next big thing" it can cause the player's to desert the whole franchise. I think ED2 wod have to have serious consideration only when they have no direction to go with the ED1 engine which doesnt seem to be the case as there is always code to be rewritten and updated 
Nobody asked for those things in their specific form, but all three were in their own way implementations of popular requests.
Powerplay: having implemented Powerplay so badly, people are still asking for an actual inter-superpower war / Thargoid invasion / other game events with bubble-wide consequences and player-driven outcomes. "Hudson no longer controls ABC 123, so you can't buy the Dropship there any more" is a little less significant than people were thinking, but the basic concept is definitely repeatedly demanded.
CQC: there were lots of requests before CQC came along for a "combat sim" mode to try flying and even PvP without actual risk. Again, CQC doesn't exactly implement that, because it doesn't let you use your own ship, but it's the same direction.
Engineers: were in the DDF. The expansion from a few lines of high-level design text to an actual feature was certainly not what people were imagining ... but they were definitely planned from the start. The three major rewrites they needed afterwards? Probably not planned from the start but definitely demanded!
The problem isn't that they implement things which people haven't asked for, the problem is that they implement things that people have asked for in such a way that they wish they hadn't. (See also: all the explorers in 3.3 denying that any of them had ever asked in any way for any attention to be paid to exploration)
It's taken them ten years to get this far. Even assuming that it wouldn't take them quite as long the second time round (which is not how software development ever works) or that another competent and faster company brings out "Space Danger" which plays a lot like Elite Dangerous but definitely isn't, we're looking at least five years away if not more.
(Every even vague competitor they've had has either not released at all, been incredibly late, had a very rough initial release that's taken some time to fix up, or some combination. Space games are difficult and niche which is why most competent companies stay well away from them)
I am aware of the potential issues with a new game, but it's the only solution to solve most if not all of the pains of Odyssey / Horizons. Also don't forget the economics of this.
What they need to do, in order not to alienate the current player base (myself included) is to allow your current CMDR to be "imported" in the new game. Imagine a UE5 generation engine (DX12/Vulkan, RT, etc.) Elite game, with fantastic graphics and decent performance for the hardware, with all main issues solved, re-written from zero, but benefiting from everything that's good in the current game and more... and with your own current CMDR in it. Wouldn't you pay 60 USD/EUR for it?
But will Frontier be able to do it? I'm skeptical of that.
What they need to do, in order not to alienate the current player base (myself included) is to allow your current CMDR to be "imported" in the new game. Imagine a UE5 generation engine (DX12/Vulkan, RT, etc.) Elite game, with fantastic graphics and decent performance for the hardware, with all main issues solved, re-written from zero, but benefiting from everything that's good in the current game and more... and with your own current CMDR in it. Wouldn't you pay 60 USD/EUR for it?
But will Frontier be able to do it? I'm skeptical of that.
Would they be able to do it .. maybe?
Would they want to do it ... probably not.
If they do a new game it would be a new game, not a re-write of the existing one. Not many game developers ever do that.
I'm down for FDev rewriting ED, but ONLY if they take all my suggestions and NONE of anyone else's. You guys are all wrong about everything and my ED2 would be awesome, with blackjack and