How many people playing the multiplayer alpha?

[sporadic_kit]

Im not going to spend £200 on an incomplete game that crashes, but of course its necessary for testers to get as many fault reports back to Frontier.

I think it makes better financial sense to just wait until the final version is released and spend minimal money to get the full experience.

I am a little concerned though that may be too many players playing the game at this early stage then becoming bored of it too soon and not being all that interested when the final release comes out and therefore reducing the number of real 'live' players which would have a negative impact on the game once its launched.

It would be good to see numbers on how many people have backed the game but still not played it.

 

[scrufferpops]

I know FD are fast, but I don't think a week is enough time for them to fix the network bugs, release 3.03, and then implement all the new features to release 4.0. I'd love to be proven wrong on that, but my guess is next week will be 3.03 at most.

Well we had it on authority that alpha 4.0 was being worked on (mostly already coded but being tweaked and stuff) in tandem with alpha 3 patching. Plus its alpha 3.03 now and most network issues have been resolved with few remaining other bugs other than the bugbear (yes pun intended) of disappearing coriolis stations....

 

[OpenFly]

It would be good to see numbers on how many people have backed the game but still not played it.

No-one has played the game yet as it isn't anywhere near finished - only at Alpha 3.03.

Over 45,000 backers according to the Backer's Page at time of writing, ~3,000 alpha backers, so around 42,000 backers haven't experienced the alpha releases.

 

[Slawkenbergius]

I am a little concerned though that may be too many players playing the game at this early stage then becoming bored of it too soon and not being all that interested when the final release comes out and therefore reducing the number of real 'live' players which would have a negative impact on the game once its launched.

I'm limiting how much I play of the alpha for that reason. Probably just an hour or two a week.

 

[Deus]

I can tell you my little story.
I first backed elite many moons ago, for 75 pounds and I thought 'great, I get to be a beta tester for the remake of my favourite game ever!' I then got off kick starter and never went back to it, just read the newsletter updates passively from time to time, as I was too busy with work to be thinking about gaming. At the time I invested the 75 pounds (which I have never done before, let alone spend that kind of money on a game), I didn't even have a picture in my head that I would be actually playing the game, the thing for me was when I first came across the E: D proposal by DB those couple of years ago, I got the same sense of enjoyment I had in 1985 when I first played the game, and I am happy to contribute and say that I helped bring the game back to life so that others can experience the same feelings from playing the game that I did all those years ago, even if I never play it.
The guys in this thread are right. Logically, you should wait for beta. I run a bricks and mortar business that requires me to detach emotionally and make logical decisions all day, every day. But I don't play games out of logic, I play them out of feeling. And only recently, I paid the extra 150 pounds to get the Alpha access(after seeing the fantastic leaps in development in all the videos) and for me, it was money well spent. It is even better to play than the YouTube vids let up. I love playing it, testing it, getting my ass blown out of the sky, and being part of the group that helped develop and grow the game, and it's getting better.
Hopefully if your on the fence about going alpha, it will give you a bit of insight (from an 80's gamer) to throw in the pot with your own ideas and feelings about it.

That said, if you young and impatient Alpha is not for you, the end.