how to bring players back

Phoenix_Dfire

Phoenix_Dfire
What will bring people back?

New mechanics / Game Loops and joining up existing main game and odyssey content. The Thargoid spires are fantastic examples of the kind of joined up content I hope to see in the future.

Personally, I’ve enjoyed the thargoid content this year but if you don’t like dealing with the alien menace, there hasn’t been anything new for those players for 18 months or so.

I just hope that fdev will invest more time into ED now that other projects have finished, despite their current financial problems.
 

Screemonster

Screemonster
Jack Winter said:
I'd like for the game to be made more challenging in various ways. Why so many POIs where the enemy is just lining up to be shot one after another, or just points to collect mats with no enemy what so ever. Why are HGEs which drop the highest rated mats threat 0 with no enemies, I'd expect some kind of boss fight.
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they're also boring to visit for that reason, making those mats a chore to obtain when I'd rather be doing literally any other activity the game offers.
At least some of the G5 mats can be obtained as mission rewards so I can get them while doing actually interesting activities.
 

Mika L

Mika L
Agony_Aunt said:
ship interiors
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After playing Starfield, i'm even less convinced that it would help ED regain player numbers. Yes, I know, in SF the space component is lacking and there is no manual flying, but i just find myself fast traveling the cockpit/exit 99% of the time since walking through the ship really adds nothing for me.
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I believe I would like ship interiors in ED. That would enable at least the possibility to walk to/from my ship. In Starfield I prefer to do that, albeit I want that walk to be short. Teleporting my character breaks immersion quite badly. I used fast travel to ship once, when I was bout 1.8 km away, on a planet that has dinosaurs, and I wanted to save and exit the game quickly. But it felt like cheating. The correct RP way would have been to walk and fight my way back to my ship. There would have been the option to save and exit on foot in a peaceful moment, so fast travel would not have been needed. Imagine a situation where you are far from your ship in a freezing rain with hypothermia. Getting back to your ship in those conditions would be a challenge, which you can completely skip by using fast travel. That would not be the correct way in an RP game.

Ship interiors could also include beds, which would enable sleeping. Sleeping would gradually heal the game character and possibly give some other bonus effect, too. In Starfield sleeping gives a bonus XP effect for 20 minutes. In ED sleeping could for example make aiming more accurate, running faster and jumping more powerful. The game character could also become tired and gradually lose performance because of sleep deprivation.

What I would absolutely not like with ship interiors is that some NPC:s or another player could board my ship whenever it's landed, and steal it. What could I then do to prevent that while I'm out doing something like exobiology or collecting materials for example?

Edit: Sorry I forgot that if my CMDR in ED has to sleep, I would have to wait that in real time. Because ED is an MMO, time is global. So probably it would not be good to require everyone's game character to sleep several hours a day. 😅
 
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Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Mika L said:
In ED sleeping could for example make aiming more accurate, running faster and jumping more powerful. The game character could also become tired and gradually lose performance because of sleep deprivation.
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In Starfield the game stops if you're not logged in, and can otherwise manipulate time in a player-centric way (e.g. sleep being fade to black, wake up two seconds = eight hours later) so that sort of mechanism makes sense to set up the availability of shelter as a resource in itself.

In ED my CMDR has far more opportunity for sleep than I do, so should never need to sleep at any time I'm actually logged in - that should just be something they can be assumed to be doing between play sessions.
 

Jack Winter

Jack Winter
Salmonea said:
There is still no purpose to control systems. It has no benefits
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Actually some player groups stomping on anarchies to promote their own factions makes for a much more boring game. Some anarchy stations and systems add much needed diversity to mission boards and general game play opportunities.
 

Mika L

Mika L
Factabulous said:
Whereas that's the only part of the SF ship interiors I would want brought over. Ship boarding is a blast in SF, the only other good part about SF ship interiors is that I can skip them straight to the cockpit
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But in SF, NPC:s don’t steal your ship, so you don’t need to worry about it when you are away. But if boarding was possible in ED, and you play in Open mode, then anyone could steal your ship. Would you really enjoy that?
 

aRJay

aRJay
Factabulous said:
Whereas that's the only part of the SF ship interiors I would want brought over. Ship boarding is a blast in SF, the only other good part about SF ship interiors is that I can skip them straight to the cockpit
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Decades ago I dabbled in games such as Duke Nukem 2 and Half Life and the thought of ship interiors in ED leading to another corridor shooter is the main reason I wouldn't want them. However the ability to take an occasional stroll around inside my ship does appeal even if most of the gameplay that sneaked in at the same time doesn't.

zimms said:
The former does not necessarily imply the latter.

I can't just steal a space station just because I can run around the concourse.
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Yes but the station concourse seems to have no connection to critical areas of the station, unlike the one in an FC which is why we don't see armed guards in stations.
 

Factabulous

Factabulous
aRJay said:
Decades ago I dabbled in games such as Duke Nukem 2 and Half Life and the thought of ship interiors in ED leading to another corridor shooter is the main reason I wouldn't want them. However the ability to take an occasional stroll around inside my ship does appeal even if most of the gameplay that sneaked in at the same time doesn't.
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You are allowed to play other recent games. Starfield ship boarding is great fun (as is SF Xenobiology, another thing ED could steal). Shame about the rest of it, but those two things are worth a look.
 

aRJay

aRJay
Factabulous said:
You are allowed to play other recent games. Starfield ship boarding is great fun (as is SF Xenobiology, another thing ED could steal). Shame about the rest of it, but those two things are worth a look.
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I know I am allowed to, but the thing is ED is the only game I have played since I got it in 2016 and I have never felt any interest in even looking at other games no matter how worthwhile they might be.
 

vanFace

V
Those ideas to bring back players are fine and all, but never ask the question of FDev even wanting that. What if the dwindling player-base is intentional? Or what if they don't care about it at all?

Maybe it is better to have a small - yet loyal - player-base that happily plays along while buying ARX, instead of having many demanding players that constantly want more content and feature (or else!).

It could be that the equation "more players equals more profits" doesn't work out for them. Instead there could be a sweet spot of player-count where the maximum profit is reached, if you take increasing costs into account as well. Or at least they think there is. We all know how good they are at balancing economics. ;)
 

GJ51

GJ51
There has historically been one thing guaranteed to bring players back - new ships

Panther Clipper

Medium Saud Kruger and Gutamaya

would generate tons of interest

Everyone has been BEGGING for these for years

Crickets from FD

Truly baffling - maybe they just want ED to die quietly...
 

angusmadmac1

angusmadmac1
I think rather than trying to get players who left back, Fdev need to try and get new players in . The status quo of in-game numbers shows that Elite has a a good base of players but also shows nothing has changed since EDO? It's just bimballing along, not great, not bad, just there ??
 

Martind Forlon

Martind Forlon
Imo without much better and permanent communication with this game playerbase there is absolutely zero chance to bring more players into game. Frontier it seems totally resigned on this in case of ED ... at least this is how I see it.

I only want to add that I witnessed how significantly have changed players look on other game (with very troubled release) where at first game designer started regular weekly streams where he was playing game and was talking with players. That game celebrated huge success in the end, but there was really long time when they were repeatedly attacked with hate and very bad behaviour ... they did not give up, found way how to communicate with players, improved game incredibly and now have strong foundation for next steps.
 
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